Mm of tfie 
 
 The Story of the Southern Mountaineer and His 
 
 Kin of the Piedmont; with an Account of 
 
 Some of the Agencies of Progress 
 
 among Them 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR W. SPAULDING 
 
 SOUTHERN PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 
 
 NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 
 ATLANTA, GEORGIA FORT WORTH, TEXAS 
 
COPYRIGHTED 1915, BY 
 SOUTHERN PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 
 
PREFACE 
 
 AMERICA knows least of what is most American. 
 Melting-pot of the nations, with Europe's and Asia's 
 dross thrown in along with their good metal, she is likely 
 to forget, in all this conglomerate, the base of the alloy, 
 which made the nation and which must yet preserve it. 
 In the providence of God there has been saved to America 
 a long wedge of that pure metal a golden wedge of 
 Ophir. Stretching from North to South, scarce two 
 hundred miles inland, are the mountains that formed 
 the frontier of English America when America became 
 a nation. These mountains are filled with the stock 
 of the Revolution, a race with the primitive virtues 
 that won our liberties, that extended our borders, that 
 preserved the ideal of freedom in its great hour of trial. 
 
 A smattering of knowledge gained mostly from works 
 of fiction has the American public of this great moun- 
 taineer race, a smattering that begets more of idle won- 
 der and vacant amusement than of honest admiration 
 and symapthy. Yet the Southern mountaineer is, all 
 in all, the most admirable type of American. Schooled 
 to simplicity, not lacking in vigor, he keeps in great de- 
 gree the powers that preserve nations, powers that too 
 many of our people are losing in the nerve-racking 
 strain of our unexampled age. What of opportunity 
 
 886477 (3) 
 
4 Preface 
 
 and resource the tfou&iaineer lacks it is the duty of more 
 fortunate' classes to supply. It is a duty of patriotism, 
 and above all a duty of Christian brotherhood. 
 
 For an intelligent application of this aid a correct 
 and sympathetic understanding of conditions is neces- 
 sary. It has been the pleasure of a few of the mountain- 
 eer's friends to help give this understanding; yet, 
 compared with the greater number of doubtful works 
 that exploit chiefly his peculiarities and faults, the efforts 
 of these friends are not too many nor too great. It is, 
 then, with some confidence of need that this present 
 volume is put forth, containing a brief account of the 
 origin and history of the Southern mountaineer, of some 
 of the most representative agencies for his development, 
 and in particular of one widespread system that seeks 
 to minister to the needs and to enlist more ministers. 
 
 The credit for the initiation and successful prosecu- 
 tion of the work on this book is due to Mrs. Ellen G. White 
 and her son, William C. White. Their deep and prac- 
 tical interest in the cause of Christianity in the South, 
 evidenced in many a phase and field, led them to pro- 
 pose such a work as this and to make possible the re- 
 search and effort which produced it. 
 
 Acknowledgment is also gladly given of the aid ren- 
 dered by the teachers of the Nashville Agricultural and 
 Normal Institute and of the smaller schools throughout 
 the South affiliated with them, as also of the assistance 
 and encouragement of friends in other connections, 
 
Preface 5 
 
 who have supplied information, corrected manuscripts, 
 and given cordial support to the enterprise. 
 
 To the author the work has been a labor of love. 
 Since, when a boy, his lot was first cast among the 
 Southern mountaineers, his interests and affections have 
 been closely entwined with theirs, and it is his confident 
 hope that this book shall be a means of enlisting many 
 more friends, both youth and those in the prime of life, 
 in the cause of the mountaineer. A. w. s. 
 
 Hendersonville, N. (7., 
 November, 1915. 
 
"THE greatest want of the world is the want of 
 men, men who will not be bought or sold; men 
 who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men 
 who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men 
 whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to 
 the pole; men who will stand for the right though 
 the heavens fall." ELLEN G. WHITE. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 HIGHLANDS AND HIGHLANDERS 
 
 CHAPTER FAGB 
 
 1. THE EXPLORERS 11 
 
 2. THE PIONEERS 21 
 
 3. IN TIMES OF WAR 32 
 
 4. EDUCATION AND RELIGION 48 
 
 5. THE MODERN MOUNTAINEER 61 
 
 6. THE HEART OF APPALACHIA 79 
 
 THE VANGUARD OF THE HELPERS 
 
 7. THE PIONEER SCHOOL 97 
 
 8. THE PREMIER OF HOME MISSIONS 108 
 
 9. REDEEMING THE TIME 116 
 
 10. COALS FROM THE ALTAR 129 
 
 A BROTHERHOOD OF SERVICE 
 
 11. A SCHOOL OF SIMPLICITY 149 
 
 12. LEARNING TO TEACH 160 
 
 13. THE OUT-SCHOOL MOVEMENT 166 
 
 PIONEERING 
 
 14. ON AN OLD FRONTIER 177 
 
 15. BEHIND THE BACK OF MAMMON 187 
 
 16. PREACHING BY HAND 197 
 
 17. SERMONS IN SOIL 206 
 
 THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY 
 
 18. FOLLOWING THE GREAT PHYSICIAN 221 
 
 19. THE RURAL SANITARIUM 227 
 
 20. THE NURSE AND THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY 235 
 
 SCHOOL WORK 
 
 21. THE SCHOOLS OF GOD 243 
 
 22. THE MOUNTAIN CHILD AND THE WORLD 252 
 
 23. Vice and Victory 262 
 
 COOPERATION 
 
 24. WHOSOEVER Is NOT AGAINST Us 279 
 
 25. THE TIMES OF CHEER 285 
 
 THE HELP OF THE HILLS 
 
 26. THE TORCH-BEARER 297 
 
 27. A CHOSEN PEOPLE 307 
 
 (7) 
 
IIXtJSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MAKER OF THE HOME Frontispiece 
 
 BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN 16 
 
 ON WATCH 31 
 
 BAKER MOUNTAIN SCHOOL AND CHURCH 48 
 
 RELIEF MAP OF APPALACHIA 64 
 
 OLD AND NEW , 78 
 
 CROSSING THE BRANCH 93 
 
 LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY 94 
 
 CHAPEL, BEREA COLLEGE 97 
 
 STUDENTS AT HIGHLAND COLLEGE 112 
 
 FIRST CABIN, AND RECITATION HALL, BERRY SCHOOL 129 
 
 ONEIDA INSTITUTE 144 
 
 AN ANCIENT ART 146 
 
 ON MADISON CAMPUS 160 
 
 AT FOUNTAIN HEAD SCHOOL 168 
 
 NICKOJACK CAVE 186 
 
 SHOPS, EUFOLA ACADEMY 192 
 
 A NEW INDUSTRY 208 
 
 AT COWEE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL 216 
 
 EAGER FOR PROGRESS 226 
 
 MADISON RURAL SANITARIUM 240 
 
 PRIMITIVE MOTIVE POWER 251 
 
 GOING TO MARKET 275 
 
 IN THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 276 
 
 SELF-SUPPORTING WORKERS' CONVENTION 288 
 
 A KENTUCKY HOMESTEAD 294 
 
 A FAMILY REUNION 304 
 
 (8) 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 \TO PART of the United States is more interesting 
 than the section generally known as the Southern 
 Appalachian mountain region, the upland South. In 
 area this mountain country, together with the hill country 
 immediatly adjoining it, is twice as large as all New 
 England. It is rich in abundance and variety of natural 
 resources, genial climate, fertile soils adapted to a very 
 large variety of fruits and field and garden crops, hard- 
 wood forests, waterpower, iron, coal, oil, zinc, copper, 
 marble, granite and other building stones, clays, material 
 for concrete and other raw materials for the most im- 
 portant and valuable standard manufactured products. 
 The people of the country are of the purest American 
 stock, if indeed we may speak of an American stock. 
 They are almost wholly the descendants of the English, 
 Scotch, Scotch-Irish, Germans, and French Huguenots, 
 who settled in America before the Revolution. They 
 are a hardy, intelligent, courageous, self-reliant people, 
 as is well shown by the part they played in the Revolution- 
 ary War, the War of 1812, the Indian wars, Mexican War, 
 and on both sides in the Civil War. Their native intel- 
 ligence and individualistic tendencies have only been 
 accentuated by the hardships imposed on them by their 
 environment, their isolation, and their separation into 
 very small communities, the long continued pioneer 
 conditions under which they still live after such conditions 
 
 (a) 
 
Introduction 
 
 have passed away from almost all parts of the country. 
 Away from the routes of commerce and the centers of 
 population, these people may be backward in their 
 industrial and commercial development, retarded to 
 such an extent that they have aptly been called "our 
 contemporary ancestors," but no one who knows them 
 well ever thinks of them as weaklings or degenerates 
 or as dull or as slow witted. In native ability, physical 
 and mental, they are the full equals of any people in 
 the United States a fact proven thousands of times 
 by the sons and daughters of this section who with little 
 preparation from the schools have made their homes 
 in other portions of the country and have come in close 
 competition with other peoples in all the industries and 
 professions. 
 
 The actual wealth of this section is small as compared 
 with other sections; but, as already stated, this is not 
 because of paucity of natural resources; it is rather 
 because of the greater difficulty of unlocking the treasure 
 house of this section and making its rich stores of wealth 
 available for use. Some day this will be one of the 
 wealthiest and most progressive sections of the United 
 States, and these people in their own home land will be 
 recognized for the worth of their sturdy qualities. 
 
 Knowing this section and its people intimately, I 
 am convinced that their greatest need is in good schools 
 adapted to their conditions schools that will make 
 them intelligent about the life they live; that will teach 
 them what they need to know to enable them to adjust 
 
Introduction 
 
 themselves to their environment and to conquer it; 
 schools that will appeal to children and grown people 
 alike; schools with courses of study growing out of their 
 daily life as it is and turning back into it a better and 
 more efficient daily living. States, churches, benevolent 
 societies, and individuals are now trying to help these 
 people to establish and maintain such schools, and many 
 interesting experiments in education can be found here. 
 Some of these are wise and successful to a degree. Others, 
 in which the necessary fundamental principles have 
 been omitted, are doomed to failure. All the world 
 knows of some of the larger of these schools, Berea 
 College, the Burns School, and others. The smaller 
 schools maintained by the Seventh- day Adventists, 
 described in the latter part of this book, are not so well 
 known by the outside world. Indeed, they are hardly 
 known by the people who live a few miles away. Yet 
 a careful study of these schools, their spirit and methods, 
 their accomplishments and the hold that they have on 
 the people of the communities in which they are located, 
 as well as of the earnest and self-sacrificing zeal of their 
 teachers, has led me to believe that they are better 
 adapted to the needs of the people they serve than most 
 other schools in this section. They have discovered 
 and adapted in the most practical way the vital prin- 
 ciples of education too often neglected. 
 
 I can never forget the summer day of 1913 when 
 in company with Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Magan, of the 
 
 school and rural sanitarium at Madison, Tennessee, I 
 
 (c) 
 
Introduction 
 
 first visited some of these schools and learned how thor- 
 oughly they had adapted themselves to the conditions 
 and needs of the people. I am sure they are worthy 
 of the most careful study of all who are interested in 
 adapting schools of whatever kind to the needs of the 
 people of all this mountain section and of all the South- 
 ern mountain countries, and that they contain valuable 
 lessons for the improvement of rural schools in all parts 
 of the United States. 
 
 For the intelligent and sympathetic account of the 
 section and people described, and for the interesting and 
 detailed description of these small schools, and Madison, 
 in which teachers for the small schools are prepared 
 this book has unusual value. I feel sure that many 
 others will find in reading it some part of the pleasure 
 which it has given me. I commend it to all who are 
 interested in any way in the people of these Southern 
 highlands and in helping to improve their opportuni- 
 ties for a better type of education. 
 
 U. S. Commissioner of Education. 
 Washington, D. C., 
 Nov. 24, 1915 
 
Highlands and Hi 
 
" To THE mountains, in time to come, we may 
 look for great men, thinkers as well as workers, 
 leaders of religious and poetic thought, and states- 
 men above all." EMMA B. MILES. 
 
THE EXPLORERS 
 
 THE Englishmen who set foot upon the shores of wil- 
 derness Virginia in the seventeenth century found 
 themselves shut up against the sea by a long range of 
 mountains in the west. Seeking a clear passage through, 
 they might wander in vain far toward the northern 
 confines of Penn's woods and deep into the southern 
 recesses of the Carolina grants. Everywhere the un- 
 known country beyond, which they sought to explore, 
 was shut from their view by the blue, hazy, sentinel 
 line of those mountains. They called them the Blue 
 Ridge. 
 
 The early settlers believed that these mountains 
 looked out upon the " South Seas." The blue haze 
 that always surmounted them seemed proof that the 
 ocean with its mists lay just beyond, and they thought 
 they had only to find a convenient pass to enable them 
 to embark upon a voyage to the Indies. It was to find 
 such a pass that the valiant and venturesome John 
 Smith, seven months after the landing at Jamestown 
 in 1607, set out on that expedition which ended in his 
 captivity to the sour-looking old Powhatan, and 
 perhaps in his rescue from death by the tender- 
 hearted Pocahontas. 
 
 Sixty miles above Jamestown, Smith's two companions 
 were surprized and slain by Indians; and he himself, 
 
 (n) 
 
12 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 after a plucky fight, was taken captive by Opekan- 
 kano, the brother of the king. He saved his life at the 
 moment by exhibiting to his captor his mystifying com- 
 pass, and following up the effect by a bewitching "dis- 
 course of the roundnes of the earth [and] the course 
 of the sunne, moone, starres, and plannets." The sav- 
 age loves no one so much as an entrancing liar, and evi- 
 dently putting Smith in this catalog, the Indians carried 
 him first to Opekankano's town, where they treated him 
 most kindly. Thereafter he was taken about from town 
 to town, until at last he was brought to the chief vil- 
 lage of the Powhatans, the principal member of a 
 confederacy of the coastal tribes. The head of this 
 confederacy the emperor, as Smith styles him was 
 also the chief of the Powhatan tribe, and was himself 
 called, by distinction, "The Powhatan." 1 
 
 Here for some days these two worthy representa- 
 tives of the white and the red races sat exchanging their 
 entertaining tales, each solemnly assuring himself 
 and with some reason that the other believed him. 
 John Smith informed his Indian majesty that the white 
 men, being defeated in battle on the seas by then' ene- 
 mies the Spaniards, had been forced to fly for refuge 
 into the red man's land, and then were compelled to 
 stay there by the leaking of then* ship. Further, he ex- 
 plained, the reason of his expedition up the river was 
 to discover the way to the salt sea on the other side of 
 the mountains, for there his father had had a child 
 slain, whose death they intended to revenge. 
 
 Not to be outdone, the red man, "after good de- 
 liberation," began to describe that same country upon 
 the salt sea, which he declared lay only just over the 
 mountains, some five, or six, or eight days' journey. 
 So exact was his information that he named the people 
 who had slain Smith's supposititious brother, and told 
 of their relations with other great peoples who sailed 
 the seas. One of these was a man-eating nation, with 
 
 John Fiske, The Colonization of the New World, p. 246. 
 
The Explorers 13 
 
 shaven crowns and long queues, and " Swords like Poll- 
 axes." Another wore short coats with sleeves to the 
 elbows, and went in great ships like the Englishmen. 
 These were only a few of the wonders; for there were 
 many other mighty nations, some of them having walled 
 houses and plenty of brass. At last the king, warming 
 to his subject, disclosed the information that his 
 village lay but one day and a half, two days, and six 
 days from various ports upon "the south part of the 
 backe sea." 
 
 All this at least, along with his safe return to James- 
 town, is told in " Captain John Smith's True Relation," 
 published in 1608, 1 though his romantic story of res- 
 cue by Pocahontas he did not put forth until many years 
 later. How much of this " relation" of the great " backe 
 sea" just over the mountains came from the lips of 
 Powhatan, and how much from John Smith's own fer- 
 tile brain, we may not know; but the account at least 
 explains one cause of the world's persistent faith in the 
 western sea lapping the lower slopes of the Appa- 
 lachian chain. 
 
 Smith, for the two years he remained in America, 
 continued active in his efforts to find a passage or a 
 path to the South Seas through those mountains. And 
 not Smith alone; for there were many to whom not 
 merely the wealth of the Indies, but the very real ro- 
 mance of discovery, appealed. In the fall of 1608 Cap- 
 tain Christopher Newport, who had commanded the 
 expedition which founded Jamestown, and who had since 
 with his ships kept up communication between England 
 and Virginia, obeyed the injunctions of the London 
 Company by attempting an expedition that should 
 pierce the mountains to the seas. He succeeded, how- 
 ever, in doing no more than to penetrate forty miles 
 above the village of the Powhatan, from which point 
 
 1 American History Leaflets, No. 27, pp. 9-17; Narratives of Early 
 Virginia, Tyler, pp. 41-52; Works of John Smith, edited by Arber, pp. 
 13-21. 
 
14 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 he and his company returned worn in body and dis- 
 appointed in hopes. 1 
 
 The ambition of the London Company, far more 
 than the desire of the sore-pressed colonists, inspired 
 the earliest attempts to pass the mountains. The com- 
 pany's commands were laid upon Captain Newport, 
 on his third voyage, never to return to England without 
 having made at least one of three discoveries: the way 
 to the South Seas, a lump of gold, or a white man from 
 Raleigh's lost colony on Roanoke Island. 2 
 
 Newport, however, was compelled to return without 
 accomplishing any one of these three behests, and no 
 doubt his explanation of his failure was greatly helped 
 by John Smith's accompanying "Rude Answer" to a 
 letter of reproach and instruction the company had 
 sent him. In this spirited statement of conditions, 
 Smith laid stress upon the need of establishing a firm 
 basis for the colony by the sending of a good class of 
 settlers, the development of agriculture, and attention 
 to the needs and requirements of the colony, rather 
 than to the immediate enrichment and glory of the 
 company. For a time thereafter, while curiosity may 
 not have lessened concerning the blue heights to the 
 west, and what they might be hiding, the practical 
 
 lAmos Todkill and others, in "Description of Virginia and Proceed- 
 ings of the Colonie," Tyler, Narratives of Early Virginia, pp. 151, 155, 
 156; Works of John Smith, pp. 121, 124, 125. 
 
 2 Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, p. 113; Works of John Smith, 
 
 p. 121. 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh was the first to attempt English colonization in 
 America. He sent an expedition, of men only, in 1585, who settled on 
 Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. These men, however, 
 returned within a year. In 1587 Raleigh sent, under the command of 
 John White, a better equipped company, which included in its number 
 seventeen women. This company likewise settled on Roanoke Island; 
 and here, on August 18, was born the first English white child on Ameri- 
 can soil, Virginia Dare. White returned to England for supplies, only 
 to find himself in the midst of the Spanish war. It was two years before 
 he could return to the infant colony in America; and when he did arrive, 
 it was only to find a deserted place. And though search was made for 
 many a year thereafter, no certain trace of the fate of this first and un- 
 fortunate colony was ever found. 
 
The Explorers 15 
 
 energies of the little Virginia colony were absorbed in 
 their local affairs. 
 
 Through the next quarter century, we catch a note 
 now and then of interest and enterprise toward the 
 west. In 1626 the governor and council of Virginia 
 wrote the English government desiring that provision 
 be made for exploring the mountain country, with the 
 hope of finding passage to the South Seas. 1 In 1641 
 four prominent gentlemen of the colony applied for per- 
 mission to undertake discoveries to the southwest of 
 the Appomattox River. 2 An Indian report to the gov- 
 ernor in 1648, of high mountains, beyond which were 
 great rivers and a great sea to which came red-capped 
 men in ships, almost induced an expedition thither. 3 
 
 The governor at that time was that bluff, enterpri- 
 sing, grasping, ruthless British gentleman, William Ber- 
 keley. He had received from his patron, Charles I, a 
 monopoly of the fur trade in the English colony; and as 
 from the other side of the mountains there now began 
 to come not only furs, but Indians with wondrous tales, 
 Berkeley grew eager to open a route to the over-moun- 
 tain country. Perhaps it would launch him upon the 
 South Seas and the Indian trade; if not, there was profit 
 as great in buying for a few hatchets and handfuls of 
 beads, beaver and fox and otter furs worth thousands 
 of dollars. 
 
 The governor, though ever upon the verge of going 
 himself to view that good land, never really saw even 
 the base of the mountains; but from 1650 to 1670 he 
 dispatched or authorized several expeditions which, 
 while they discovered no "backe sea/' did open to the 
 view of the English a broader field and a wider oppor- 
 tunity than the South Seas could ever have afforded 
 them. 
 
 There lived in 1650 at Fort Henry, 4 on the York 
 
 iAlvord and Bidgood, The First Explorations of the Trans- Alle- 
 gheny Region by the Virginians, p. 45. 
 
 8 Id., p. 28. 8 Id., p. 46. 4 Now Petersburg, Virginia. 
 
1 6 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 River, a captain and merchant of adventurous disposi- 
 tion by the name of Abraham Wood. A servant lad 
 brought over from England, and indentured 1 to a 
 planter for the payment of his journey's expense, Abra- 
 ham Wood had risen step by step until he was one of 
 the largest landowners in the colony, and a principal 
 dealer, under Berkeley, in the fur trade. 3 
 
 In 1650 this Captain Wood, with an English gentle- 
 man named Bland, and two others, with white servants 
 and an Indian guide, made the first notable western ex- 
 ploration on record for the English. Their course led 
 them southwesterly; but though they went some dis- 
 tance into Carolina, they did not reach the mountains; 
 and their discovery, supposedly, of a " westward flowing 
 river" helped for a brief time to encourage the belief 
 in a near-by western sea. 3 
 
 This view was given weight by the fictions of another 
 explorer, who actually claimed that, in the region of 
 what is now North Carolina, he had stood upon the 
 shore of a sea that stretched westward beyond sight. 4 
 
 This man was a German, John Lederer, and the 
 statement above mentioned is from his account of his 
 second exploring expedition. On a former trip he had 
 won the distinction, so far as the records go, of being the 
 first white man to ascend the mountains. In this work 
 of exploration he was encouraged and probably sent 
 by Governor Berkeley. Alone, except for some Indian 
 
 l An "indentured servant" was so called from the papers which 
 bound him to a stated term of service. Such papers were usually made 
 in duplicate, the two copies being written side by side on the same sheet, 
 and then cut apart in a waved or indented line, for identification. Hence 
 such papers were called "indentures." 
 
 2 First Explorations of the Trans-Alleglieny Region, pp. 34 ff. 
 
 'Id., pp. 47-51; Discovery of New Brittaine, by Bland, reprinted 
 in Salley, Narratives of Early Carolina, pp. 5 ff. 
 
 4 First Explorations of Trans-Allegheny Region, pp. 160, 161. 
 
 John Lederer's account of his southwestern travels, published in 
 1672, is reprinted in the above named work. It might be possible, with 
 a little imagination, as one of his editors proves, to harmonize Lederer's 
 accounts with geographical facts, supposing that he understates his 
 distances and perhaps his time, and that he actually reached Florida 
 and the Gulf; but such an interpretation is rejected by Alvord and Bidgood. 
 
The Explorers 17 
 
 guides, Lederer set out in 1669, and after nine days of 
 travel reached the foot of the Blue Ridge. It took him 
 a whole day to climb the mountain; and then, though 
 he imagined, from the deceiving mists to the eastward, 
 that he could see the Atlantic Ocean, his eye searched 
 in vain to the west; for there he beheld, instead of the 
 great South Sea, nothing but a sea of mountains. 1 
 
 There followed, in 1670, his second expedition to 
 the southwest, already mentioned; and a third, in the 
 latter part of the same year, in which he and ten other 
 white men reached again the crest of the Blue Ridge 
 at another point, only to view the discouraging height 
 of the great North Mountain, far up and" across the 
 valley. Not yet was the mystery of the mountains 
 solved. 
 
 Governor Berkeley next turned to that Captain 
 (now Major-General) Abraham Wood whose first ef- 
 forts we have seen, and commissioned him to make an 
 attempt to "goe further in the discovry." Abraham 
 Wood responded, not by personally heading an expe- 
 dition for he was now, perhaps, too greatly busied 
 with his growing affairs but by fitting out a party 
 under Captain Thomas Batts, with Robert Fallam, two 
 other white men, and an Appomattox chief named Pere- 
 cute. They were later joined by several other Indians 
 of the same tribe. It is possible that Abraham Wood 
 himself had before this crossed the mountains, but the 
 evidence thereof is too vague to make it certain, 2 and 
 so far as records go, Batts and Fallam have the distinc- 
 tion of being the first to reach the waters of the Ohio. 3 
 
 Captain Batts and his party crossed the Blue Ridge, 
 and entered the upper part of the Shenandoah Valley 
 near the site of the present city of Roanoke. A few miles 
 
 l ld., pp. 64, 145 ff. 
 
 2 See First Explorations of Trans-Allegheny Region, pp. 52-55; Collins, 
 History of Kentucky, p. 805 ; Shaler, History of Kentucky, p. 59. 
 
 This expedition of Captain Batts and his party has received scant 
 notice in American histories. If not in extent, at least in significance, 
 it should rank with the journeys of La Salle and Marquette; for by it the 
 2 
 
1 8 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 south of this they crossed the divide, and entered the 
 valley of a river flowing northward, which they followed 
 to the present borders of the State of Virginia, at Peters 
 Falls. 1 At this point, their provisions having all been 
 spent for some days, and game being hard to get, their 
 Indian guides insisted on turning back. They were also 
 doubtless influenced by the nearness to a great and 
 fierce tribe of Indians living to the north and west, 
 "on the Great Water, and [who] made salt." 3 These 
 were probably the Shawnees, and their salt works were 
 at the numerous "salt licks" plentiful in Kentucky, 
 though the Shawnees lived north of the Ohio River, 
 and only made short forays into Kentucky. 
 
 Batts and Fallam, before they retreated, made simple 
 but solemn proclamation that King Charles of England 
 owned these waters and the lands wherethrough they 
 flowed, and they branded five trees with the initials 
 and signs of Charles, Berkeley, Wood, and themselves. 
 As they lingered upon a height, and cast their eyes west- 
 ward, they were persuaded that they saw, "westerly, 
 over a certain delightful hill, a fog arise, and a glimmer- 
 ing light as from water," and "supposed there to be a 
 great bay." Not yet had the myth of the "backe sea" 
 lost its charm. It was considerably later, no doubt, 
 before the reports of the Indians, the investigations 
 
 English were given such right as discovery bestows to claim the over- 
 mountain country for their king and nation. But so little known have 
 been the sources of this history, and so garbled the account by some 
 early historians, that the foremost American authorities have either ig- 
 nored it or mentioned it only to dismiss it as unreliable. Kven Captain 
 Thomas Batts' name has undergone wondrous transformations in the 
 pages of his few chroniclers, from "Henry Batte" (his brother) in Beverly's 
 "Virginia," p. 62, to "Bolt" in Shaler's "Kentucky," p. 59, and "Bolton" 
 in Parkman's "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West," p. 5. 
 In a recent and most valuable work, the sources for the history of this 
 expedition, as of other early English explorations, have been gathered 
 and placed in the hands of the public: " First Explorations of the Trans- 
 Allegheny Region" by C. W. Alvord and Lee Bidgood, Arthur Clark 
 Company, Cleveland, 1912. 
 
 1 First Explorations of the Allegheny Region, p. 192, footnote. 
 
 By them this river was named Wood River. It is now known in 
 the upper part as New River, and in the lower as the Kanawha. 
 
 /</., p. 198. 
 
The Explorers 19 
 
 of farther-going explorers, and the accounts of the French 
 upon the Mississippi and the western plains made clear 
 the immense distance at which lay the Pacific, that 
 great "backe sea." 
 
 When Batts and Fallam returned, Governor Ber- 
 keley, excited by their report, renewed at once his 
 oft-thwarted intention of heading an expedition to the 
 mountains. But he was just at this tune given sufficient 
 employment nearer home by a discontented people, who, 
 under a certain well-remembered Nathaniel Bacon, rose 
 up in the first insurrection of an America that would 
 be free. The exciting cause of Bacon's Rebellion was the 
 unpunished outrages of the Indians, who had grown 
 hostile. Their attitude shut off the West for a tune 
 from the Englishmen; and while it is possible that there 
 were some venturesome hunters and traders who pene- 
 trated the mountains, yet, so far as records go, the mat- 
 ter of western exploration rested for half a century. 
 
 In 1716 Alexander Spottswood, then the energetic 
 governor of Virginia, roused both by love of adventure 
 and the fear of the encroaching Frenchman in the West, 
 determined to take a step toward occupying that ram- 
 part of the mountains which separated his people from 
 their foes. With a gay cavalcade of fifty Virginia gen- 
 tlemen, as many black servants, an unknown number 
 of "rangers, pioneers, and Indians," and a train of pack 
 horses to carry his equipage and his wines, the governor 
 set out from Williamsburg, the capital, and hi late Au- 
 gust or early September crossed the Blue Ridge at 
 Swift Run Gap. 
 
 With due formality, Spottswood, arriving at the bank 
 of the Shenandoah River, took possession of the valley 
 in the name of his king, burying there hi an empty flask 
 a paper witnessing thereto. Then the happy party of 
 gentlemen went back home, to boast to their descend- 
 ants of this doughty and inspiring deed, and of their en- 
 trance thereby into "The Order of the Horseshoe." 
 Their horses, accustomed to bare feet on the soft soil 
 
2o The Men of the Mountains 
 
 of the lowlands, had been shod as a protection against 
 the rocky ground of the mountains; and to commemo- 
 rate the lesser with the greater fact, Spottswood pre- 
 sented to each of his gentlemen companions a golden 
 horseshoe, set with precious stones for nailheads, and 
 bearing the legend, "Sic yuvat transcendere monies": 
 "Thus it is a pleasure to cross the mountains." 
 
 But Spottswood's expedition, agreeable as it was 
 made to be, was not merely a pleasure jaunt. The clear- 
 sighted and enterprising governor had been looking with 
 troubled eyes at the progress of the French along the 
 Great Lakes and southward. The English were as 
 yet but a little fringe along the seacoast. More inclined 
 to build solidly than to venture daringly, they were al- 
 lowing French influence to outrun them in the Mis- 
 sissippi Basin; and, as Spottswood clearly saw, unless 
 they should at least occupy the mountain passes before 
 the French should reach them, their seaboard colonies 
 would be at the mercy of their rivals. The governor 
 pointed out these facts to the king's court, and offered 
 to conduct an expedition, not only to secure the moun- 
 tains, but to establish a post upon Lake Erie. While 
 his suggestion was not acted upon, English minds were 
 from this time on more fully occupied with securing 
 first the mountains and afterwards the over-mountain 
 country. 
 
 The Appalachian system had done a very distinct 
 service to the English, by shutting them up against the 
 sea. It kept them close enough together to grow strong 
 and capable, while the French were stretching their 
 thin line from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf. And when 
 the struggle for America began in good earnest, the 
 English had the advantage of a good base from which 
 to launch then- attacks upon the exposed French terri- 
 tory. Other and greater causes there were for the Eng- 
 lish successes, which made America Anglo-Saxon and 
 Protestant instead of Latin and Catholic, yet the moun- 
 tains had no small part to play in that great drama. 
 
II 
 
 THE PIONEERS 
 
 IT WAS sixteen years after Spottswood's expedition 
 before there came permanent settlers to the moun- 
 tain country. Where the torrent of the Potomac breaks 
 through the Blue Ridge at Harper's Ferry, there is 
 formed a natural passage that leads into one of the 
 most beautiful and fertile valleys in America, the fa- 
 mous Shenandoah, or valley of Virginia. This valley 
 lies between the Blue Ridge and the ranges of the Alle- 
 ghenies. Its lower end is bounded by the Potomac, 
 though its counterpart on the northern side of the river 
 runs up through Maryland into Pennsylvania. The 
 valley is drained by the Shenandoah River, a principal 
 affluent of the Potomac. 
 
 In 1832 sixteen families from Pennsylvania, whose 
 names indicate that they pretty well represented the 
 mixed character of the population the valley was to 
 receive, 1 hewed their way through the woods to the 
 Potomac, and about two miles above Harper's Ferry 
 passed over as the first settlers to enter the valley of 
 Virginia. 3 The next few years saw a rapid increase in 
 the number of emigrants, chiefly from Pennsylvania, 
 though tidewater Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New 
 
 1 The names given are Joist Hite, George Bowman, Jacob Chris- 
 man, Paul Froman, Robert McKay, Robert Green, William Duff, and 
 Peter Stephens. 
 
 2 Kercheval, History of the Valley of Virginia, p. 45. 
 
 (21) 
 
22 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 York, and various countries of Europe helped not a little 
 to swell the tide. The great majority of these first im- 
 migrants were Germans, or " Pennsylvania Dutch," who 
 in religion were chiefly Lutherans, Calvinists, and Men- 
 nonites, with a few Dunkers, the last two being Bap- 
 tist bodies. 1 Many Quakers also entered the valley; 
 and English Baptists, when they began to arrive, about 
 1745, were so zealous in spreading their doctrines that, 
 with the later Methodists, 2 they became in tune the 
 predominant religious influence. 
 
 Of all nationalities, however, the Scotch-Irish were 
 most deeply to influence the character of the valley and 
 the mountain population. These people with the com- 
 pound name were in blood almost pure Scotch. The 
 last part of their name was derived from the residence 
 of then- people for two or three generations in the north 
 of Ireland, during which tune they received but very 
 slight infusion of Irish blood, but not a little of Irish 
 influence. 3 They were Presbyterian in religion, demo- 
 cratic in spirit, enterprising and thrifty in business; 
 and these qualities subjected them to the opposition 
 of the bishops, the king, and the merchants of Eng- 
 land. In the early years of the eighteenth century, 
 the difficulties of then- situation in Ireland began 
 to drive them from their homes there, to seek lib- 
 erty in the New World. They came by the tens of 
 thousands, some to Boston, more to Charleston, but 
 most of all to Philadelphia. From this latter place they 
 were dispersed throughout the back parts of Pennsylvania; 
 then, following southwestward the trend of the moun- 
 tains, they poured into the valley of Virginia, the pied- 
 mont and highlands of North Carolina, and the valley 
 of the Tennessee. From thence they filled the moun- 
 /<*., p. 56. 
 
 'The first Methodist preachers came into the valley in 1775. 
 Id., p. 62. 
 
 Fiske, Old Virginia and her Neighbors, pp. 391, 392; Bolton, Scotch- 
 Irish Pioneers, pp. 1-4, 294-300; Henry Cabot Lodge, art. "Distribution 
 of Ability in the United States," Century Magazine, September, 1891, 
 
The Pioneers 23 
 
 tains and poured over upon the western plains. They 
 soon greatly outnumbered the Germans, and for a long 
 tune, if not always, exceeded the settlers of English 
 extraction. It is estimated that one-third of all the 
 Scotch-Irish in Ireland emigrated to America. 1 Be- 
 sides the Scotch-Irish, there were, it seems, not a few 
 of the true Irish and of Scotch from Scotland, who 
 were easily mixed and easily confounded with the Scotch- 
 Irish, all of them being Celts. 
 
 In the valley of Virginia there was for a generation 
 a lively state of things between the sturdy Germans 
 and the Irish, the latter assisted, little doubt, by the 
 Scotch-Irish and the English. No one could deny the 
 thrift and ability of the " Dutch," with their fine big 
 barns, their fat flocks and herds, their overflowing 
 garners, and their heaped-up feather beds. And though 
 their more lively Celtic neighbors might find a narrow 
 toe-hold for ridicule of their slow-witted men and their 
 broad-waisted, barefooted women, they could not do 
 better than imitate the steadfastness of the one and the 
 housewifely virtues of the other. 
 
 But when these races came together in the first town 
 of the valley, Winchester, their "national prejudices," 
 says the old historian, " promised much disorder and 
 many riots. It was customary for the Dutch on St. 
 Patrick's Day to exhibit the effigy of the saint with a 
 string of Irish potatoes around his neck, and his wife 
 Sheeley with her apron loaded also with potatoes. This 
 was always followed by a riot. The Irish resented the 
 indignity offered to their saint and his holy spouse, 
 and a battle followed. On St. Michael's Day the Irish 
 would retort, and exhibit the saint with a rope of sauer- 
 kraut about his neck." Then the Germans would take 
 up the challenge, "and many a black eye, bloody nose, 
 and broken head was the result." 
 
 At first the settlers were peacefully received by the 
 
 iBolton, Scotch-Irish Pioneers, p. 7. 
 
 2 Kercheval, History of the Valley of Virginia, p. 179. 
 
24 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Indians. The reputation of William Penn was high, 
 and the red man supposed that whoever came from 
 Penn's colony must be of the same character as himself. 
 They therefore welcomed the immigrants from the 
 north. But of the Virginians, whom they called the 
 "Long Knives," they held a very different opinion. 
 Then: race had been exterminated in the land of the 
 "Long Knives," and it was fortunate for the mountain 
 settlements that the Indians saw the majority of the 
 invaders coming from the land of the Quaker rather 
 than of the Cavalier. 
 
 When at last the Indians, after the defeat of Brad- 
 dock in 1755, determined to make war on the mountain 
 settlers, they found them too well entrenched to be 
 driven out. And though the usual horrors of frontier 
 warfare were endured by the whites, they succeeded 
 in keeping their place in the country. 
 
 Here George Washington received some of his ear- 
 liest training in command and warfare. This young 
 man, just past his majority, had become famous in the 
 operations against the French in the West, and he was 
 now placed in charge of the defense of the frontier. 
 In spite of the terror and confusion of the valley dwellers, 
 and in spite of official delay and neglect, Washington 
 succeeded in meeting the necessities of the case, and 
 crowned his efforts in the autumn of 1758 by entering 
 at the head of his men the nesting place of the French 
 and Indian terror, Fort Duquesne. 
 
 Thus was "the father of his country" identified with 
 the early history of the mountain people. Several years 
 before this, he had become well acquainted with their 
 country, when, at the age of sixteen, he was employed 
 by Lord Thomas Fairfax to survey his extensive hold- 
 ings in the valley. That world-weary old English no- 
 bleman had settled here in the wilderness as a refuge 
 from disappointed love and hopes. His haughty tem- 
 per and his immense holdings, which sometimes con- 
 flicted with his neighbor's rights, made him none too 
 
The Pioneers 25 
 
 popular with them. But he brought around him a very 
 considerable settlement of English from tidewater Vir- 
 ginia, and in his manor of Greenway Court held a sort 
 of feudal authority that made the chief distinction and 
 almost the chief discontent of the democratic valley. 
 
 Lord Fairfax formed a deep attachment to the 
 young Washington, and bestowed upon him as the re- 
 ward of his surveying, a large tract of land, to which 
 Washington in later years added much by purchase. 
 Through the interest thus created, Washington became 
 deeply responsible for the later development of this 
 mountain country. 
 
 As the lower part of the Shenandoah became set- 
 tled the later immigrants passed on to the southwest, 
 the upper part of the valley, which there grows higher 
 and more broken. These immigrants, mostly Scotch- 
 Irish, formed what was known as the Backwater 
 Settlements; that is, the settlements on the back- or head- 
 waters of the streams. Though this part of the depres- 
 sion between the Blue Ridge and the western ranges is 
 crossed and broken by ridges and hills, it does not lose 
 wholly the character of a valley, and after the divide 
 is passed, south of the present city of Roanoke, the coun- 
 try again rapidly broadens into the valley of the Ten- 
 nessee. It was through this natural gateway that the 
 western part of the mountain country was chiefly set- 
 tled. 
 
 While the Shenandoah Valley was filling up with 
 settlers and pouring the surplus over into the Ten- 
 nessee, another source of population was forming near 
 the mountains in North Carolina. This colony received 
 the most of her population, not from her seacoast (for 
 she had no good ports), but from Virginia on the one 
 side and South Carolina on the other. From the latter 
 colony there came up into North Carolina not a few 
 settlers, some English and Scotch-Irish and many Hu- 
 guenots French Protestants who had fled from the 
 persecutions of Louis XIV. On the other side, from 
 
26 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Virginia, partly through the valley and partly from the 
 lowlands, there poured into the middle part of North 
 Carolina a stream of the sturdiest kind of settlers, men 
 of little wealth for the most part, but of good bone 
 and sinew and of independent mind. Virginia's landed 
 aristocracy, with their slaves, left small place in the low- 
 lands for the poor man, and the back counties of North 
 Carolina offered such men a refuge and an opportunity. 
 The settlers were largely Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, 
 English Quakers, and German Baptists. Forsythe, 
 Rowan, and Mecklenburg counties, stretching north 
 and south across the State, midway east and west, 
 came by the middle of the eighteenth century to hold 
 that independent class of citizens that first resisted 
 British tyranny and both in word and deed preceded 
 the Massachusetts and Virginia patriots in striking 
 for liberty. 1 
 
 The larger part of the mountains and plateaus in 
 western North Carolina was held by the Cherokee 
 Indians, the fiercest of the Southern tribes, and that 
 country was late in being settled. But some venture- 
 some pioneers began to settle in the northernmost parts. 
 Here, in what is now Watauga County, there came to 
 live, in 1750, a family of Quakers by the name of Boone. 
 There is still standing, near the county-seat, the black- 
 ened stone chimney of the cabin of one of the sons, 
 Daniel Boone, best known and most worthy represen- 
 tative of the hunters, explorers, and frontiersmen of that 
 day. He well deserves the fame that has come down 
 with his name. Though one of the most enterprising 
 and tireless of frontiersmen, Daniel Boone, true to his 
 
 1 The Mecklenburg Declaration, adopted by a midnight convention 
 in Charlotte, N. C., May 20, 1775, preceded the national Declaration 
 of Independence by over a year. It declared the people of Meck- 
 lenburg County free and independent from the British crown. It was 
 inspired by the same causes that were stirring the whole country, but 
 its early boldness shows the influence of the free frontier life. 
 
 Even earlier than the Mecklenburg Declaration was a similar pro- 
 nouncement made by the men of the Virginia backwater districts, at 
 Abingdon, Va., in January, 1775. 
 
The Pioneers 27 
 
 Quaker training, was a peace-loving man. Daring 
 oftentimes, but never reckless, modest and peaceable, 
 but restless and enterprising, he kept ever in the van of 
 the western settlers, until he died, at the age of eighty- 
 six, on the other side of the Mississippi, still on the 
 western border of civilization. 
 
 At the age of eighteen, Daniel Boone married his 
 seventeen-year-old bride, and for seven years, pressed 
 with the cares of a growing family, he played the per- 
 fect part of a quiet Quaker farmer, a life varied only 
 by an occasional trip to the coastal towns as a wagoner 
 and by the annual hunt that replenished the winter 
 larder. But in 1759 the Cherokee Indians, who had 
 watched with jealous eyes the steady encroachments 
 of the whites upon their mountain lands, broke in upon 
 the border settlements with tomahawk and torch, and 
 the times of blood, of unrest, and of adventure began. 
 
 Two years of war, in which Daniel Boone bore his 
 part, bought peace from the conquered Cherokees. 
 Boone had during this time become somewhat acquainted 
 with the upper part of the Tennessee River country, 
 and had made several hunting trips thither from his 
 North Carolina home. It was on one of these trips, 
 while gazing from a mountaintop upon a herd of buf- 
 falo beneath, that he is said to have exclaimed, "I am 
 richer than the man mentioned in Scripture, who owned 
 the cattle on a thousand hills: I own the wild beasts of 
 more than a thousand valleys!" It is safe to say that, 
 despite his Quaker training, he was unacquainted with 
 the identity of the "man mentioned in Scripture," or 
 he would scarcely have made such a boast; but the ex- 
 clamation reveals his delight in the wild and wide free- 
 dom which the wilderness gave him. 
 
 In May, 1769, Boone, with five neighbors and a 
 trapper guide, John Finley, undertook the journey to 
 Kentucky through Cumberland Gap, famed as the great 
 gateway for Indian war and hunting parties, and for 
 settlers' caravans and armies yet to come. 
 
28 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Then begins the most romantic portion of Boone's 
 life. Sometimes alone, sometimes with but one com- 
 panion, sometimes with more, hunting, watching, dodg- 
 ing Indian war parties, once captured and hardly es- 
 caping with life, after two years he returned home to 
 bring his family from the Yadkin to the Blue-grass 
 country. In 1773 a company started with him, in- 
 cluding his own and several other families, among them 
 the first women to dare the dangers of the journey to 
 the plains of Kentucky. But the party was stopped 
 by an Indian attack in the upper valley of the Tennessee, 
 a circumstance which decided his more timid com- 
 panions to remain for a while where they were, in the 
 midst of the mountain settlements. It was nearly two 
 years before Boone saw his family, with some others, 
 settled in the Blue-grass of Kentucky. With this event 
 he passes for the most part out of the life of the moun- 
 tains. 1 
 
 Another man there was who came to the valley of 
 the Tennessee as soon as Boone, and who bore a large 
 part in the development, first of the mountain country, 
 and later of middle Tennessee. This was James Robert- 
 son, who in 1769 traveled with Boone from the settle- 
 ments on the Yadkin over the mountains to the Wa- 
 tauga Old Fields, in the northeastern corner of what is 
 now Tennessee. He found there the cabins of William 
 Bean, the first settler in the Tennessee Valley, 3 and of 
 one Honeycut, with whom he stayed during the summer 
 and raised a crop of corn. In the autumn, Robertson 
 started back alone to bring his family and friends. He 
 carried his provisions on his horse's back a sack of 
 parched corn mixed with maple syrup, to be supple- 
 mented by the game he might find along the way. There 
 was no road, not even a trail, and he must keep his course 
 by the sun and the woodman's signs. But for days the 
 
 1 See Life of Boone, Bruce, Ellis, Thwaites, and others. 
 'Ramsey, The Annals of Tennessee, p. 94. 
 
The Pioneers 29 
 
 sky was overcast, and he lost his way in the Iron Moun- 
 tains. Coming to a precipice down which he could not 
 lead his horse, he was compelled to turn him loose. 
 His provisions were at last all gone, and his powder was 
 spoiled. For fourteen days he wandered without food, 
 until, completely exhausted, he fell at the foot of some 
 cliffs in a dying condition. He was roused from his 
 stupor at last by the sound of voices, as, guided by an 
 unseen hand, two hunters the only persons, perhaps, 
 in all that trackless wilderness came directly to where 
 he lay. They revived him, nursed him for several days, 
 and then, giving him some of their provisions, they set 
 him upon his way, and he reached his home on the 
 Yadkin in safety. 1 A few weeks later he led a con- 
 siderable body of settlers over the mountains to the 
 Watauga settlement, with which he was for ten years 
 identified as a leader and counselor, before going on into 
 the West. He was much like Boone in character, peace- 
 able and humble, but he had less of the roving spirit 
 and was far more practical and capable. As the Ten- 
 nessee Valley became more thickly populated, he 
 relinquished to his abler friend, John Sevier, the leader- 
 ship of the colony, and in the midst of the American 
 Revolution headed an expedition farther to the west, 
 where on the Cumberland River he became the founder 
 of Nashville, the present capital of the State of Ten- 
 nessee. 2 With John Sevier he is counted the chief founder 
 of Tennessee, as Boone and the Shelbys are of Kentucky, 
 and Clark of Indiana and Illinois. 
 
 iGilmore, Rear Guard of the Revolution, p. 41; Ramsey, Annals of 
 Tennessee, p. 104. 
 
 2 The visitor in Nashville today, as he waits for his car in the transfer 
 station of the street railway, may observe a dim record on the opposite 
 wall, a record that transports his mind from the rush and thunder of the 
 busy city back to the quiet of the river's reedy banks by the old French 
 Lick, the site of Nashville: 
 
 From 1784 to 1807 
 
 The site of this building 
 
 was owned by 
 
 James Robertson 
 
 Founder of Nashville. 
 
30 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 From the population of the broad valleys the moun- 
 tains received their scantier portion. In the midst of 
 the various ranges there are many beautiful little val- 
 leys and smaller gorges, or " coves," and the plateaus 
 often make rolling table-lands which invite first the wood- 
 man and then the farmer. When and how all these 
 little valleys, plateaus, hills, and mountainsides received 
 their population there is little of chronicle to tell us. 
 Some, doubtless, of those who started from the eastern 
 lands to go to the far West, were stopped by weariness 
 or accident in some fan- spot that promised a home to 
 a heartsick woman or a broken man. Others came 
 back into the mountains when the valleys, crowding 
 fuller, offered less of opportunity, because of high-priced 
 land or because of the hateful presence of slavery, which 
 in a way bore harder on the poor white man than it did 
 on the negro. Here in the beautiful free mountain country 
 they reared their families and sent forth their sons and 
 daughters to conquer the harder fields and hills that 
 always remained. And so the mountains were filled, 
 until today, from the Ohio and the Susquehanna in the 
 North to the brows of Kennesaw and Lookout in the 
 South, the mountaineers muster four million souls. 
 
 They make a distinct and a notable class. They are 
 the Highlanders of America, in environment, in habit, 
 in disposition, and largely in blood. For they remain, 
 as they began, America's purest stock of the British 
 Isles, Scotch and English and Irish, with some infusion 
 from the best blood of Germany and France. If we were 
 to judge from the family names in the mountains today, 
 we -should say that the majority of the people are of 
 Scotch and Irish descent, with the English element al- 
 most as great, a very respectable percentage of Hugue- 
 not blood, and the German almost lost. 1 The speech 
 
 1 Without doubt there are many Anglicized German names which 
 pass for English, and by this means it is impossible correctly to measure 
 the amount of German blood among the mountaineers. But, in every 
 way, the impress of the German is scarcely to be seen upon the mountain 
 people, except in the lower Shenaudoah, 
 
The Pioneers 31 
 
 is eighteenth-century English, with some Scotticisms 
 thrown in. The great valleys, of course, have more 
 nearly kept pace with the progress and the decadence 
 of the rest of the world, but the people of the more iso- 
 lated mountain sections well deserve, in all that the 
 phrase implies of honor and respect as well as of sym- 
 pathy, the term which has been applied to them, "our 
 contemporary ancestors." 
 
 After photo by Scadin. 
 
Ill 
 
 IN TIMES OF WAR 
 
 THERE was never a more fearless people than the men 
 of the mountains. In their forward march they faced 
 not only the discomforts and dangers of the wilderness, 
 but a savage people who had no mind to be dispossessed 
 of their hunting grounds. 
 
 About midway in the Southern lands there stretched 
 from the ocean to the Mississippi a group of Indian 
 tribes remarkable for their courage, independence, and 
 high-hearted resistance to the encroachment of the 
 whites. On the eastern side of the mountains, in North 
 Carolina, lived the powerful tribe of Tuscaroras, kin to 
 the Iroquois of New York, the most advanced and the 
 most powerful of all the native peoples. In 1711 the 
 Tuscaroras began a terrific assault upon the infant 
 settlements of eastern North Carolina. They were 
 finally subdued, and in making peace the remnant of 
 the tribe agreed to remove to the land of their brethren 
 in New York. There they joined the confederacy of 
 the Five Nations of the Iroquois, which was thereafter 
 known as the Six Nations. 
 
 Inhabiting the mountains to the west, from the 
 Blue Ridge to the Cumberlands in Tennessee, were the 
 Cherokees, who were divided into two sections, the 
 mountain Indians, or Otari, who lived in the highlands 
 of North Carolina, and the Erati, or valley Indians, 
 (32) 
 
In Times of War 33 
 
 who held the valley of the Tennessee and adjacent 
 parts. They were noted as the most spirited and war- 
 like of all the Southern tribes. 1 
 
 There was an offshoot of this tribe dwelling in towns 
 near the present city of Chattanooga, and afterwards 
 inhabiting the gorges of the river below, in Alabama, 
 known as the Chickamaugas. They were at first com- 
 posed wholly of Cherokees, but afterwards received 
 many renegade white men and runaway negroes, as 
 well as outlaws from other Indian tribes, and by this 
 infusion of bad blood, added to the already great fe- 
 rocity of the tribe, they became the most bloodthirsty, 
 treacherous, and vindictive Indians with whom the 
 settlers had to deal. 3 
 
 Lying south and west of the Cherokees was the great 
 Creek nation, a people of high intelligence and great 
 ability. They did not so delight in war as the Chero- 
 kees, but they were a very powerful tribe, and possessed 
 of courage in the defense of their rights. Beyond them, 
 and reaching to the Mississippi, were the Chickasaws, 
 similar in character to the Creeks, though partaking 
 more fully of the warlike nature of the Cherokees. South 
 of the Chickasaws, and often joining with them, were 
 the Choctaws, a tribe of less importance both in peace 
 and in war. 
 
 These Indian tribes faced the settlers on their south- 
 ern and western frontiers, and long contested the ground 
 with them. Kentucky was uninhabited by any set- 
 
 tThe fighting qualities of the Cherokees have been depreciated by 
 a modern writer, who quotes a tidewater Virginian as authority. But 
 writers nearer to the Cherokees in point both of time and place, bear a very 
 different record. They represent them as warlike and courageous, with 
 a haughtiness born of almost invariable victory over neighboring tribes. 
 When in 1730 the white people tried to induce the Cherokees to make 
 peace with the Tuscaroras, with whom they were habitually at war, 
 the reply was, "We cannot live without war. Should we make peace 
 with the Tuscaroras, we must immediately look out for some other with 
 whom we can be engaged; for war is our life." When the Tuscaroras 
 left, the Cherokees faced the whites. See Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, 
 p. 83; Turner, Life of John Sewer, pp. 24-26. 
 
 'Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, pp. 183-186. 
 3 
 
34 'Fhe Men of the Mountains 
 
 tied bands of Indians. It was the common hunting 
 ground of the Northern and Southern tribes, never in 
 the peaceable possession of either, but always the scene 
 of hostile encounters whenever opposing hunting par- 
 ties chanced there to meet. The Shawnees, to the 
 north of the Ohio, mingled with the fierce Iroquois, 
 and their bands were the most troublesome that har- 
 rassed Daniel Boone and his companions in Kentucky. 
 
 It was with the Cherokees and Chickamaugas, how- 
 ever, that the greatest difficulties were experienced. 
 Treaties were made with them by the English and the 
 colonial governments at different times, by which they 
 ceded lands to the settlers; but the treaties were illy 
 kept. Some of the Indians protested against them; 
 and the settlers, as they grew more numerous, stepped 
 over the boundaries and took up lands which did not 
 belong to them. Various other grievances, as thefts 
 and murders committed by white outlaws at different 
 times, enraged the Indians, and their natural thirst 
 for blood prompted them to assail the lonely cabins 
 and even the log forts. 
 
 The Tennessee Valley dwellers were fortunate in 
 having a leader capable of meeting this savage foe. 
 John Sevier, a Virginian of Huguenot descent, in 1772 
 settled in the Watauga country, on the Nolichucky 
 River, and by his gallantry and his genial and hospitable 
 nature soon became, as he always remained, the most 
 noted and the most popular man in the Tennessee 
 Valley. 
 
 Oconostota, the far-seeing head of the Cherokee 
 people, and Atta-culla-culla, the vice-king, fought fiercely 
 against the whites, until, their towns in ashes, their 
 fields and orchards destroyed, and many of their war- 
 riors slain, they were fain to purchase a peace of their 
 conquerors. 
 
 John Sevier's method of Indian warfare was harsh 
 and seemingly cruel, but it was the only kind that 
 would impress the Indian mind. After he had carried 
 
In Times of War 35 
 
 fire and sword remorselessly through the midst of their 
 country, until they sued for peace, he was ever ready 
 to extend to them his friendship, upon then: promises 
 of good behavior, and no one was trusted so much by 
 them as this same "Nolichucky Jack," as Sevier was 
 familiarly called by both Indians and settlers. To his 
 own people he was a tower of strength, to whom they 
 turned in every hour of danger. He was a copy, on a 
 ruder stage, of his gallant and glorious fellow-country- 
 man and fellow-religionist, King Henry of Navarre. 
 He never lost a battle, and though always at the head 
 of his men, he never had a wound. He was the idol of 
 the frontiersmen of Tennessee, who followed him un- 
 questioningly into the haunts of the bloody Chicka- 
 maugas and the fastnesses of the mountain Cherokees, 
 or after the marauding Tory and British bands in the 
 East. 
 
 Forty miles to the north of Sevier 's home lived Evan 
 Shelby and his son, Isaac, who were, almost equally 
 with Sevier and Robertson, the leaders of the men 
 of the valley. Under the Shelbys, the Watauga men 
 joined the Virginia and Pennsylvania forces that 
 won the great battle of the Kanawha against the Shaw- 
 nees and Iroquois in 1774; and they were among the 
 leaders who marched over-mountain in 1780 to fight the 
 British at King's Mountain. Isaac Shelby became the 
 first governor of Kentucky, as did John Sevier of Ten- 
 nessee. 
 
 When the Revolutionary War came, it found the 
 Tennessee Valley with about three thousand set- 
 tlers men, women, and children while the valley of 
 Virginia had a much larger population, probably fifteen 
 or twenty thousand. The valley of Virginia bore its full 
 part in filling the Continental armies, for it was cjiose to 
 the scene of action, and was felt to be an integral part 
 of the colony. One of its sons, General Daniel Morgan, 
 raised in the valley his famous rifle corps, which won 
 fame in both Northern and Southern campaigns, contrib- 
 
36 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 uting in great measure to the victory of Saratoga and to 
 Greene's successes in the South. 
 
 But the Tennessee Valley people, and with them 
 the Backwater Settlements, were more distant, and 
 with the great mountain mass between them and the 
 coast, they were more shut up to their own problems 
 and difficulties, and were also protected from invasion. 
 But they had no unimportant part to play as "the 
 rear-guard of the Revolution." 
 
 The British had agents of influence among the 
 Cherokees, and in 1778 they persuaded these Indians 
 to plan an attack upon the over-mountain settlers, at 
 the same time that the Shawnees and British were to 
 march down from above the Ohio, and the British were 
 to sweep the country east of the mountains from Sa- 
 vannah and Charleston to the Potomac. 
 
 The plot was well laid and carefully concealed. Sa- 
 vannah and Charleston had fallen into the hands of the 
 British, and all of Georgia and South Carolina were under 
 their control. This opened the road to the Indian coun- 
 try, and the British thereupon sent a pack-train with 
 large supplies of ammunition and money up through 
 Georgia to the Cherokees, who for safe keeping be- 
 stowed the treasure in the towns of the Chickamaugas. 
 British officers were among the Cherokees, carefully 
 planning every detail of the plot, which was to be sud- 
 denly and secretly sprung, and was to wipe out the over- 
 mountain settlements in a day. If it had succeeded, 
 there is little question that the British would have held 
 everything south of Virginia, and very likely have won 
 all America. For with the Tennessee Valley smitten, 
 there would have been no one to fight King's Mountain, 
 no King's Mountain to turn back the tide of Cornwallis' 
 success, and finally no Cornwallis cooped up in Yorktown 
 to surrender British hopes with his sword. 
 
 But God was watching over the fortunes of America. 
 The plan of the British and Indians was defeated by the 
 impatience of Dragging Canoe, the Chickamauga chief, 
 
In Times of War 37 
 
 to begin the war. He could not see so much powder 
 and shot lying idle those long weeks, while the Cherokees 
 were getting thoroughly ready, and so he started with 
 some of his braves on a raid. James Robertson, who had 
 been appointed commissioner of Indian affairs for North 
 Carolina, and who had taken up his residence at the 
 Indian town of Chota, heard of the threatening storm, 
 and informed the settlements. In consequence, only 
 a few of the outlying, lonely homes were surprised. 
 
 The Tennessee men determined to make a counter 
 stroke which should effectually stop these preparations. 
 A force of several hundred men were gathered on the 
 upper waters of Clinch River, and under the command 
 of Evan Shelby they went swiftly down the river to the 
 Chickamauga towns. Falling upon the Indians without 
 warning, Shelby defeated them in detail, burned several 
 of their towns, and destroyed the stores placed among 
 them by the British. 
 
 This disaster cooled the ardor of the Chickamaugas 
 for a time, and their war party suddenly returned home. 
 But yet they and their Cherokee brethren brooded sul- 
 lenly for some months, and before long broke out again. 
 This time the whites, aroused and on their guard, and 
 with Sevier and Shelby at their head, so thoroughly 
 reduced their savage foe that the Indians were glad 
 to purchase a peace of "Nolichucky Jack," and promise 
 to live in love with their white brothers. 1 
 
 Thus the terrible storm that was to have burst on the 
 rear-guard of America was dispelled. Sevier returned 
 to his home on the Nolichucky, Shelby to his in the 
 Holston district, but now, with all then* fellow-settlers, 
 alert for danger and stirred to fiery indignation by this 
 revelation of the fiendish plot against them. 
 
 While in this state of mind, they received a message 
 across the mountains from Ferguson, a British officer 
 whom Cornwallis, advancing up into North Carolina, 
 
 1 Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, pp. 186-190; Roosevelt, Winning 
 of the West, Vol. II, pp. 114-120. 
 
38 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 had sent out toward the mountains to gather what 
 Tories he could to his ranks, and to overawe the pa- 
 triots. Ferguson had encountered a company of four 
 hundred over-mountain men who had been sent over 
 too late to help save Charleston. Stirred to wrath 
 against these strange, long-haired, buckskin-shirted men 
 whose ami with the rifle was so unerring, he sent a let- 
 ter by a liberated prisoner to the Tennessee settlers, 
 warning them that unless they ceased fighting the 
 British, he would march over the mountains and burn them 
 out. It was an idle threat, but it had an unexpected 
 answer. The letter was sent to Shelby, who had headed 
 some of the four hundred, but who had now returned to 
 his home. He rode at once to Sevier's, and together 
 they resolved to answer Ferguson's threat in person. 
 
 They sent word to William Campbell, sheriff of the 
 Backwater Settlements, who marched to join them with 
 four hundred men from Virginia. The rendezvous was 
 at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, and here the men 
 of the mountains gathered to the number of nearly a 
 thousand. Practically the whole military strength of 
 the Tennessee settlements was present, and lots were 
 drawn to determine who should remain at home to de- 
 fend the settlements. Then the little army, after being 
 dedicated to their work in a prayer by the old Presby- 
 terian minister, Parson Doak, took up their line of march, 
 most of them on horseback, single-filing over the moun- 
 tains. Being joined east of the mountains by a force 
 from that section, till they numbered fifteen hundred, 
 they set out in rapid search of Ferguson, who, when he 
 heard of then 1 coming, began a hasty retreat. They 
 overtook him, however, at the border line of North and 
 South Carolina, after so rapid a march that they left all 
 but nine hundred of their men behind. 
 
 With about one thousand British and Tories, Fer- 
 guson entrenched himself on the top of a wooded hill, 
 which he named King's Mountain. The nine hundred 
 and ten mountaineers surrounded him and began their 
 
In Times of Wai* 39 
 
 Assault, which lasted all day. As the British would 
 charge down one side with the bayonet, the mountain- 
 eers, who had none, would retreat on that side, but on 
 the other they would be creeping higher, and when the 
 British returned to their entrenchments, they were fol- 
 lowed by the foe they had so lately driven. Slowly the 
 British were hemmed into a compact mass at the very 
 crown of the hill, where they were mowed down by the 
 terrific rifle fire. The end was the death of Ferguson 
 and the surrender of his army. 
 
 The following day the mountaineers started on their 
 return march. Some of them remained to fight in the 
 army of General Greene, but the majority, fearful for 
 their homes which they had left so scantily guarded, 
 returned at once across the mountains. 
 
 At King's Mountain, however, had been struck the 
 critical blow of the Revolution. At the time of that 
 battle, the Carolinas and Georgia were wholly in the 
 hands of the British, and Cornwallis was just about 
 to invade Virginia. On hearing of the disaster to Fer- 
 guson, Cornwallis hastily retreated toward Charleston, 
 followed by Greene, who during the next year played 
 the game of war so well that he manipulated Cornwallis 
 into Virginia, finally to fall into the hands of Washing- 
 ton at Yorktown. The victory of King's Mountain 
 was the turning point of the Revolution, a victory won 
 by the sudden and unexpected forward movement of 
 the " rear-guard/ 7 the men of the mountains. 
 
 There were no British to meet in Kentucky, and no 
 organized and determined Indian foe as in Tennessee. 
 But Virginians, mainly mountain men, under George 
 Rogers Clark, were the heroes in wresting Illinois and 
 Indiana from the English, in 1778-79. With a dwin- 
 dling force, in the depths of winter, Clark successively 
 took Kaskaskia, Illinois, and Vincennes, Indiana, sur- 
 prising the British garrisons and cajoling the French in- 
 habitants. His march from Kaskaskia to Vincennes, a 
 distance of two hundred miles, was made in the time of the 
 
40 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 spring floods, when for days his men had to march through 
 waters often up to then: necks. 1 But he and his Vir- 
 ginians took and held the Northwest Territory. 
 
 After independence was secured, the western tide 
 of emigration rapidly increased, and Kentucky especially 
 filled rapidly with settlers. She was the first State 
 west of the mountains to be admitted to the Union. 
 This was in 1792, and Tennessee followed in 1796. The 
 after development of those States was chiefly in the 
 lowlands. The mountains between Kentucky and Vir- 
 ginia were only gradually filled, and the same is true 
 of the Cumberlands in Tennessee. The North Caro- 
 lina plateau, lying between the Blue Ridge and the 
 Great Smoky chain, for the most part continued to be 
 held by the Cherokees, until then: removal by treaty 
 to Indian Territory in 1838. The northern part of this 
 plateau had, however, received not a few settlers, and 
 the more southern part, especially the wide, rolling 
 French Broad Valley, was speedily occupied upon the 
 removal of the Indians. Only a fragment of the tribe 
 now remains upon a small reservation in the Great 
 Smoky Mountains. 
 
 As has been said, it was largely the encroachments 
 of slavery that filled the mountains with its population 
 of the poorer or more conscientious or more race- 
 conscious of the white people. Though such compara- 
 tively level country as the Shenandoah and Tennessee 
 valleys and parts of the North Carolina plateau had 
 not a few slave-holders, the vastly great majority of 
 the mountaineers were without slaves, and were haters 
 of slavery, the most of them not so much from a moral 
 as from an economic point of view. One of the strong- 
 est champions of the Union in East Tennessee was 
 " Parson" Brownlow, of Knoxville. In his paper, The 
 Knoxville Whig, he fiercely and fearlessly lashed seces- 
 sion and secessionists; yet just as fiercely he turned 
 
 Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Vol. II, p. 221. 
 
In Times of War 41 
 
 his scorn upon the slave-carriers of the North. 1 But 
 while he entered a plea for slave-owners, he cursed 
 secession, and used all his powers to preserve the Union. 
 In this attitude he was representative of a certain class 
 of his fellow-mountaineers. The negro was no charge 
 of theirs. If they must see him at all, they preferred 
 to see him a slave. But they loved the Union. They 
 felt the heart-throb of the nation more than the 
 pulse-beat of the section. They had a State pride, 
 but then- pride in the nation was greater. They had 
 grasped and borne aloft the " Stars and Stripes" 
 wavering in the fierce strife of the Revolution, they had 
 in great numbers fought under the folds of "Old Glory" 
 in the wars of 1812 and 1846; and with the fierce loyalty 
 of the mountaineer they exclaimed in 1861 that the 
 old flag should not go down. 
 
 Yet another and perhaps a larger number put their 
 hatred of slavery in the forefront. From the foothills 
 of North Carolina came forth the challenge of the free- 
 soilers of the South to the slave-holders: "Our motto 
 and we would have you to understand it is the 
 abolition of slavery and the perpetuation of the Ameri- 
 can Union. If by any means you . . . take the 
 South out of the Union today, we will bring it back 
 tomorrow. If she goes away with you, she will return 
 without you. ... If ... the oligarchs do not 
 quietly submit to the will of a constitutional majority 
 of the people, as expressed at the ballot-box, the first 
 battle between freedom and slavery will be fought at 
 home and may God defend the right!" 2 
 
 States of this Union north of Mason and Dixon's line, com- 
 monly called the New England States, alias the Free States, were never 
 to any great extent slave-holding. No Sir-ee! Their virtuous and pious 
 minds were chiefly exercised in slave-stealing and slave-selling. To 
 Old England, the mother country, our Pilgrim Fathers of the New Eng- 
 land States are indebted for their knowledge of the art of slave-stealing; 
 and to the pious, God-fearing and liberty-loving New England States 
 are we of the South wholly indebted for our slaves!" Brownlow, quoted 
 in "A History of Tennessee and the Tennesseans," Will T. Hale, p. 455. 
 
 2 Hintpn R. Helper, The Impending Crisis, pp. 186, 413. Helper 
 was born in Davie County, North Carolina, near the mountains, and 
 
42 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 It is to be remembered that the men of the tidewater 
 section and the men of the mountains were in great part 
 from different peoples. The coastal region was settled 
 chiefly by Englishmen, who had been used, either in them- 
 selves or in their superiors, to pleasant lives of wealth and 
 culture. The mountain population, while it included the 
 more daring spirits from among the English, and to a 
 lesser degree the sprightly Huguenot and the stolid 
 German, was chiefly composed of and influenced by the 
 Celtish blood of the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, lovers 
 of wild liberty and haters of oppression. There was al- 
 ways antagonism between the mountains and the low- 
 lands in the politics of Virginia and the Carolinas, with 
 slavery as a predisposing cause. As for the western parts 
 of Tennessee and Kentucky, they were peopled by the 
 same men who filled the mountains, and it took time 
 for the differences of location, 'soil, and social conditions 
 to create antagonism between them. Thus it came about 
 that when slavery was drawing near its crisis, there was 
 a sharper distinction between the mountaineers and the 
 lowlanders in Virginia and North Carolina than in 
 Kentucky and Tennessee. Yet when it came to war, there 
 was a curious twist in the situation: of the two North- 
 ern States, Virginia, the easternmost, felt the sharpest 
 cleavage in its population; of the two Southern, Tennessee, 
 the westernmost, had the most decided division. Ken- 
 tucky's Union sentiment was widely distributed through- 
 out the State; Virginia's was so greatly localized that 
 the western counties split off and formed the new com- 
 monwealth of West Virginia in 1863. North Carolina, 
 
 was a representative of the non-slave-holding class so greatly in the ma- 
 jority in the South. His book, addressed to the South, made a master- 
 ful appeal for the abolition of slavery, based upon unanswerable economic, 
 historical, and moral arguments. But, coming as it did at the very climax 
 of the struggle, and stinting no words in its arraignment of the slave-hold- 
 ing aristocracy, it had less influence in the black belt than in free-soil 
 regions. It had great influence in the campaign that resulted in the 
 election of Lincoln, and it greatly helped in shaping the attitude of the 
 mountain country. As for the author, he was driven out of the South, to 
 find a refuge in the nation's capital. 
 
In Times of War 43 
 
 though its mountains held many Union sympathizers 
 who in State politics were opposed to the slave-holding 
 oligarchy, yet felt the surge of Southern sentiment 
 deeply to the very walls of its western line; but East 
 Tennessee, despite outside influences which strenuously 
 sought to win her to the Confederacy, remained chiefly 
 Unionist to the last. 
 
 And when it came to fighting "I reckon y'all had 
 the draft in your country/ 7 said a Kentucky mountain- 
 eer to a Northerner after the war. 
 
 "Yes, we had the draft." 
 
 "We didn't have no draft in our country," said the 
 Kentuckian. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because we listed so fast the draft couldn't catch 
 us," was the proud reply. 
 
 Kentucky gave seventy-five thousand men to the 
 Union armies from all parts of the State; and the gift 
 of Virginia's mountains was thirty-seven thousand. 
 Tennessee furnished over fifty thousand soldiers to the 
 Federal armies, thirty-five thousand of whom were 
 from the mountain section. The mountains of North 
 Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, though largely Union- 
 ist hi sentiment, had not Tennessee's advantage of be- 
 ing next to Union territory; and so their Union men 
 were either compelled to enter the Confederate army 
 or take the uncertain chances of the lier-out and the 
 refugee. 1 
 
 These were the men of the mountains; what of the 
 women? In the story of the war between the States, 
 the women of the South have right to the high praise 
 given them for the spirit with which they cheered their 
 men and the courage with which they endured the 
 pain of privation and the anguish of loss. And none 
 were there more spirited than those daughters of Hu- 
 guenot and Covenanter who dwelt in the mountains. 
 
 1 Anderson, Fighting by Southern Federals, p. 10. 
 
44 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 They saw their men swept away to fill the ranks of the 
 Union and the Confederate armies. Alone with their 
 children, they tilled the fields and garnered the har- 
 vest, often but to see it vanish in the raid of the soldier 
 or the guerilla. Often they escaped to the laurel only 
 in time to save themselves from death at the hands of 
 marauders who set their homes in flames. Many a time 
 did they go on scout and courier duty when men were 
 lacking or then- peril greater. 
 
 A great poet has chanted the praises of Paul Revere, 
 who rode twelve miles to warn the Concord men that 
 the redcoats were coming. But who has sung the fame 
 of Mary Love, who rode in winter weather thirty-five 
 miles by road and trail, and through the enemy's lines, 
 to carry word from General Grant to the beleaguered 
 army at Knoxville? or of the mother of the little John 
 Brown who seized the dispatches from the hand of the 
 faulting girl, and piloted her little son at night through 
 the hostile pickets till he was safely on his way with the 
 news of relief to Burnside? 1 
 
 But not in daring merely more in watching, wait- 
 ing, enduring, succoring, are written the annals of the 
 women of the mountains. Yet sometimes then* spirit 
 shamed even brave men who had faced a thousand dan- 
 gers, but quailed before a sudden assault. Of all the 
 Union leaders in east Tennessee, few were better known 
 than " Parson" Brownlow, then the editor of the fiercely 
 partizan Whig, and after the war the governor of the 
 State. None were more bitterly hated by Secessionists 
 or more fully trusted by Unionists. His courage had 
 been tried and proved in debate, in plot, in prison, and 
 in exile, and to the people of East Tennessee his giving 
 way before their enemy was almost unbelievable. But 
 when Burnside retreated before Longstreet, word was 
 sent to the most prominent noncombatants of Knox- 
 ville that it would be wise for them to leave. Accord- 
 
 1 Temple, East Tennessee and the Civil War, pp. 521-523. 
 
In Times of War 45 
 
 ingly some of the chief Unionists whose place was not 
 in the army left, under cavalry escort, for Kentucky. 
 Among them was Brownlow. 
 
 Through the miry roads, in a heavy downpour of 
 ram, the melancholy procession went on its way toward 
 the North, everywhere being greeted with startled in- 
 quiries as to the state of things at the front. Just over 
 the first county line they came, early in the night, upon 
 a cabin out of which swarmed a host of children, with 
 their stout mother at their head, holding high a pine 
 torch. 
 
 "What in the name of God," she said, "does all 
 this mean? Where are you men going? Is Burnside re- 
 treating? Who are you, anyhow?" 
 
 One of the party thus roughly challenged answered 
 mildly that General Burnside, so far from being able 
 to retreat, was probably now a prisoner with all his army. 
 
 "And you are running," she exclaimed, "without 
 firing a gun!" 
 
 "Oh, no," said an ironic old gentleman, "we are 
 simply retiring in good order, to save the country." 
 
 "Yes!" she returned, waving her torch in their faces 
 with a patriotic fierceness, "and I expect the next thing 
 I'll hear will be that old Bill Brownlow is running too!" 
 
 At this point that doughty hero, concealed in the 
 midst of his party, remarked in a subdued but fervent 
 tone of voice: "Gentlemen, this is no place to make a 
 stand. I think I'd rather encounter Longstreet's army 
 or Vaughn's cavalry than that woman!" 1 
 
 It was the strong element of the mountaineers, allied 
 to the very considerable Unionist party in the low- 
 lands, that made all but the most southern States doubt- 
 ful to the Confederacy. North Carolina at first voted 
 down secession; Tennessee voted it down once and al- 
 most the second time, and was out of the Union but three 
 months; Virginia at first voted against secession, and 
 
 ss, The Loyal Mountaineers of Tennessee, p. 382. 
 
46 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 when it at last went with the Confederacy, it lost to 
 the Union its northwestern portion. Kentucky never 
 left the Union. 
 
 It has been said by competent authorities that if 
 it had not been for the mountains and the hostile moun- 
 taineers, the South, despite the odds against her, might 
 well have won in the Civil War. She was fighting a 
 defensive war, always an advantage in itself. Her ar- 
 mies were composed of men than whom none could have 
 been more brave and enduring, more hopeful and per- 
 sistent. But the South was cut into three parts. In 
 the west the Mississippi clove between the western 
 South and the main body. More important still, in 
 the east the mountains formed a barrier between the 
 coastal States and the middle States, in which sections 
 the main part of the war was fought. And neither ar- 
 mies nor supplies could well be transported without a 
 long detour around the mountains. The difficulties of 
 transportation across the mountains might have been 
 surmounted, but an indifferent or hostile population 
 made the perils of the passage too great, and, moreover, 
 forbade to the South the strategic advantages the moun- 
 tains naturally afforded. And therefore to the mountain- 
 eers is due in great part the credit for the preservation 
 of the Union, first, through then- hostility to slavery and 
 to the State supremacy which was the bulwark of sla- 
 very; second, through the disproportionately large num- 
 ber of soldiers they furnished the Union armies; and third, 
 through their holding for the Union that long wedge 
 of territory that cleft the South in two. 
 
 On themselves, however, the effects of the great Civil 
 War were in large measure disastrous. While the rest of 
 the South received a terrible destruction of property 
 and life, the mountains, especially in the parts less open 
 to the influences of civilization, received the most ter- 
 rible destruction of peace and peace ideals. For it was 
 largely hi the quarrels of the Civil War, when brother 
 fought brother and clan fought clan, that the perpetual 
 
In "Times of War 47 
 
 feuds of today had their origin. It is true that the feud 
 was transplanted from Scotland with the immigration 
 of the first settlers, and it is a form of punishment or" 
 vengeance naturally fostered by the conditions of moun- 
 tain isolation; but it is a matter of record that many of 
 the Kentucky feuds (where almost all the feuds are) 
 were born in the Civil War. Not all the mountaineers 
 were Unionists, and the most horrible effects of war 
 were to be witnessed, not where great armies fought 
 pitched battles, but where the bushwhacker lay in wait 
 in the mountain thicket to shoot his neighbor, or where 
 a party of guerrillas, rendered as savage by their irregu- 
 lar life and warfare as the Indian foes of their fathers, 
 had passed from house to house, pillaging, and murder- 
 ing helpless women and children. And when one man 
 of a family was murdered, his brothers or his sons felt 
 it their privilege and their duty to murder the murderer, 
 for which in turn they must be murdered. 
 
 "War," said General Sherman, "is hell," and he 
 who carried sword and torch through the heart of the 
 South should know what he was talking about. But 
 nowhere were the horrors of war so apparent as in those 
 nightly raids that left bloody corpses and blazing homes, 
 those dastardly ambushes and fierce encounters as of 
 wild beasts, which left the scars of war not merely upon 
 the face of the land but upon the hearts of men to gen- 
 erations then unborn. 
 
 The mountaineer has shown his prowess in battle 
 through the whole history of our country, from the days 
 of the Indian wilderness to the last great struggle be- 
 tween the brothers of the Union. But let us be glad that 
 the qualities of loyalty, courage, endurance, and force 
 which he has manifested in the wars of his people, can 
 now be called to nobler warfare and put to the test in 
 a conflict that may glorify rather than debase him. 
 
IV 
 EDUCATION AND RELIGION 
 
 THE settlers who filled the mountains were Protes- 
 tant in religion, and Protestant they remain today. 
 Indeed, there is much of eighteenth-century intolerance 
 inherited by the present generation from their popery- 
 hating fathers. With good cause, doubtless, yet without 
 knowing the cause, the mountaineer, pent within the 
 narrow limits of his knowledge and experience, holds 
 in abhorrence the very name of Catholic, and even 
 looks with aversion upon the Episcopalian, who, in the 
 Highlander's traditions, is tarred with the same stick. 
 For it was English Dissenter and Scotch Presbyterian 
 that chiefly filled the valleys and settled among the 
 hills, and to them, who had fought episcopacy along with 
 tyranny in the old country, the Church of England was 
 only the papacy transferred to English soil. Some- 
 thing more of contempt than of ignorance is manifest in 
 this story current in the mountains, of the old woman 
 who was visited by a missionary in clerical garb. 
 
 " Mother," he asked, "do you know of any Episco- 
 palians hereabout?" 
 
 She chewed a few meditative moments on her snuff- 
 stick. 
 
 "Hain't never seed none," she replied at length, 
 "but my old man's hung up yander the skins of all the 
 varmints he's kilt. Ye might go thar an' look!" 
 (48) 
 
Education and Religion 49 
 
 It might be expected from the large Scotch element 
 that peopled the mountains that the church of greatest 
 numbers and influence would be the Presbyterian. And 
 indeed in the early history this was true. Presbyterian- 
 ism was the prevailing creed, where there was any, 
 not only in the mountains but in the western part of 
 Kentucky and Tennessee, into which the mountain popu- 
 lation overflowed. 
 
 Into the valley of the Tennessee, in 1780, came 
 Samuel Doak, the first Presbyterian minister of whom 
 we have record as crossing the mountains. 1 He settled 
 first in Sullivan County, near the northeastern boundary, 
 and later in Washington County, on the Nolichucky. He 
 was teacher as well as preacher, and to him belongs the 
 honor of establishing, in 1783, Martin Academy, the first 
 school west of the mountains. Here he supported him- 
 self on his farm while at the same time preaching and 
 teaching. 
 
 It was at once the strength and the weakness of the 
 Presbyterian Church that it demanded an educated 
 ministry. It was its strength because it thus maintained 
 a high standard of service and of worship; it was its 
 weakness in this western country because it could not 
 supply ministers enough to reach the rapidly growing 
 and scattered population. Thus the mountaineers 
 were left largely without the help of ministers and teach- 
 ers, and too frequently large communities lapsed into 
 irreligion and ignorance. 
 
 Education was by no means so widely diffused in 
 the eighteenth century as at present, and it must not 
 be supposed that the majority of the western settlers, 
 whether they came from the seaboard or from Britain, 
 were able to read and write. Of Daniel Boone, in many 
 respects the superior of his fellow frontiersmen, one of 
 his biographers states that he was the worst speller 
 he ever knew, a fact attested by a short record left by 
 
 1 Wilson, The Southern Mountaineer, p. 80; Phelan, History of Ten- 
 nessee, p. 218. 
 4 
 
50 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Boone on a beech tree until recently standing near 
 Jonesboro, Tennessee: 
 
 D. Boon 
 
 CillED A BAR On 
 
 Tree 
 
 in ThE 
 
 yEAR 
 
 1760 
 
 Even those who could read, in the more isolated 
 districts, often lacked books for then* children, who 
 grew up with no learning but that of the woods and 
 fields. Naturally, these rough frontiersmen, free of 
 thought and rude of manner, grew impatient with the 
 formal and polished Presbyterian service, which they 
 had only infrequent opportunity to attend, and Pres- 
 byterianism then tended either to become modified in 
 form or to be driven from the field by the simpler Bap- 
 tist and Methodist forms of worship. 
 
 The Presbyterians, however, maintained their hold 
 in the larger and more settled communities, and especially 
 did they do great service in the establishment of schools. 
 Samuel Doak was not the only one who founded a school. 
 Before the nineteenth century was fairly upon its way, 
 there were several educational institutions hi the val- 
 ley of Virginia, and at least four academies in the valley 
 of the Tennessee. One of the former was Washington 
 College, afterwards famous as Washington and Lee Uni- 
 versity. And one of the latter was the Southern and 
 Western Theological Seminary, or Maryville College, 
 as it was afterwards called, out of which came hun- 
 dreds of devoted ministers and educator^ for the moun- 
 tain country. Maryville College was founded in 1802 
 by Rev. Isaac Anderson, a young Presbyterian minister 
 located in east Tennessee, after a fruitless journey on 
 horseback to Princeton University to beg for help for 
 his mountaineers. Indeed, education was almost wholly 
 in the hands of the Presbyterians in those early days, 
 
Education and Religion 51 
 
 and the efforts of their educators, self-sacrificing and 
 to a great degree self-supporting men, are not belittled 
 by the heroic labors of then* Methodist brethren who 
 displaced them in the outlying districts. 
 
 The only Methodist school of the early days was 
 Bethel Academy, established hi 1790 in Jessamine 
 County, Kentucky, in the edge of the Blue-grass. It 
 was a daring venture at a time when Indian massacres 
 were common and pioneer minds were more engaged 
 with bullets than with books. But it flourished for a 
 time, only to become neglected and forsaken after a 
 few years. 1 
 
 But education, in the sense of book learning and 
 scholastic training, was clearly out of the question for 
 the mountaineers in isolated sections. Not infrequently 
 parents of some education left their children, for lack of 
 opportunity and for stress of living conditions, wholly 
 illiterate. There was no system of free public schools, 
 and the community schoolhouse could not flourish where 
 neighbors were five to fifty miles apart; and the parents 
 themselves were too much occupied with the struggle 
 for existence to give much attention to the personal 
 instruction of their children. Thus it came about that 
 the mountain country, except the valleys, was largely 
 left without schools or any means of instruction. 
 
 This did not mean, however, that mental life was 
 dead. There was an education in the strenuous and 
 sometimes precarious life of the wilderness, an education 
 that made sharp eyes, skilful hands, and shrewd minds. 
 The independence and the hard life gave an education 
 in frugality, sturdiness, and shrewdness, that did but 
 await a wider opportunity to show a wider power. 
 
 Methodism entered the mountains almost as soon 
 as it appeared in America. It thrived far more in the 
 Southern and Middle States than in the Northern, the 
 Methodist General Conference in 1781 reporting 9,666 
 
 JRedford, Methodism in Kentucky, p. 69; McFerrin, Methodism in 
 Tennessee, pp. 271-273. 
 
52 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 members south of Pennsylvania, and but 873 north of 
 Maryland. 1 The valley of Virginia was well within 
 the field of the earliest laborers, but the over-mountain 
 country was later in being reached. Yet it was only 
 the year 1783 when Jeremiah Lambert was appointed 
 to the Holston Circuit, which meant the valley of the 
 Tennessee, and there in that year he found sixty members, 
 the result, doubtless, of the work of some nameless lay 
 preacher. 
 
 Carried by the undaunted and tireless circuit-rider, 
 Methodism spread with marvelous rapidity through the 
 western country. The circuit-rider was a minister 
 who had several churches or preaching places in his 
 charge, around to which he went, usually on horseback, 
 sometimes on foot, on a circuit that was often a hundred 
 miles in extent, and not infrequently more. The 
 pioneer preachers are more properly called itinerant, 
 or traveling ministers, than circuit-riders, since there 
 was no regular circuit established until some churches 
 or companies were formed. 
 
 These itinerants and circuit-riders were often men 
 of little learning, but of mighty zeal. They endured 
 privations and persecutions that would have daunted 
 ordinary men, braving the terrors of the wilderness and 
 the even more terrible vengeance of lawless opposers, 
 who did not hesitate to beat and stone them. We read 
 concerning one of these, of his " breakfasting on a frozen 
 turnip; sleeping at night in a wretched cabin, with 
 his head in the chimney-corner; fording streams; living 
 on the poorest fare; preaching in cabins, sometimes 
 with part of the congregation drunk, at others with chil- 
 dren about him bawling louder than he could speak; 
 and receiving, for the four months of his toil, three 
 dollars and fourteen cents." Yet he writes, "Though 
 the life of a Methodist preacher is very laborious and 
 fatiguing, it is what I glory in!" 2 
 
 Stevens, History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, p. 164. 
 8 Id. p. 300, 
 
Education and Religion 53 
 
 These Methodist itinerants received little pay, often 
 none. Bishop Asbury, himself the head of the church 
 in America in its earliest days, and who set the example 
 of arduous and untiring labor, continually traveling 
 from Maine to Georgia and from the seacoast to the 
 western frontier, one year received, we read, but sixty 
 dollars in money. Often worn and sick in body, this 
 great leader of the circuit-riding brotherhood pushed 
 himself on by sheer force of will and fervor of love. 
 Almost every year after 1784, Asbury rode over the 
 mountains to visit and strengthen the valley churches, 
 ministering on the way to the few settlers scattered 
 along the French Broad River in North Carolina, down 
 the gorge of which lay his way to the Tennessee settle- 
 ments. He records that he was " strangely outdone" 
 for want of sleep, having been greatly deprived of it 
 through the wilderness, " which is like being at sea in 
 some respects, and in others worse. Our way is over 
 mountains, steep hills, deep rivers, and muddy creeks; 
 a thick growth of reeds for miles together, and no inhab- 
 itants but wild beasts and savage men." 
 
 The freer expression of religious emotion which the 
 Methodist preachers brought into their services appealed 
 to the nature of the frontiersmen, who without doubt 
 added something of their own wildness to the character 
 of the western meetings. What is known as "the Great 
 Revival" began in 1800. While it originated and was 
 carried on most fully in middle Tennessee and Ken- 
 tucky, its influence quickly spread into the valleys 
 and mountains, and in time into the Eastern States. 
 
 The state of religion among the mountaineers and 
 the western settlers at that time was melancholy. 
 What churches existed were for the most part cold and 
 formal, with ministers of the same character. The 
 doctrine of predestination, held by both the Presbyterian 
 and the Baptist churches, was little calculated to win 
 men from that life of wild license and sin which the 
 frontier conditions so easily induced. 1 
 
 JSee Blake, The Old Log House, pp. 14-18. 
 
54 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Located in Logan County, Kentucky, just north 
 of the Nashville settlements, was a Presbyterian minister 
 named James McGready. Early hi his life, he confesses, 
 he had entered the ministry without being converted. 
 His ministry, naturally, had little power. One night 
 he overheard two friends talking over his case, with 
 the expressed conviction that he was an unconverted 
 man. This set him to thinking and closely examining 
 himself, and the result was, a little later, his thorough 
 conversion. 
 
 A few years later, in 1796, he removed from North 
 Carolina to Kentucky, where he took charge of three 
 small Presbyterian congregations. Abandoning the Cal- 
 vinistic view, he preached a gospel of free salvation 
 to every man who would take it. Then he made a 
 covenant with his believers to spend one Saturday of 
 every month for a year praying for the conversion of 
 sinners. Within a year a work of revival began, but it 
 was stopped by the opposition of other ministers. 1 In 
 the summer of 1799, under the earnest work of Mr. 
 McGready, the revival began again. "But," he writes, 
 "the year 1800 exceeds all that my eyes ever beheld 
 upon earth. All that I have related is only, as it were, 
 an introduction. Although many souls hi these congre- 
 gations during the three preceding years have been 
 savingly converted, and now give living evidences of 
 then union to Christ, yet all that work is only like a few 
 drops before a mighty rain, when compared with the 
 wonders of Almighty grace that took place in the year 
 1800." 2 
 
 The occasion was that of a sacramental meeting 
 (the Lord's supper) held at the Red River church. Two 
 brothers, William and John McGee, the former a Pres- 
 byterian and the latter a Methodist minister, started 
 from the Nashville country on a preaching tour toward 
 
 ild., p. 25; McDonald, History of the Cumberland Presbyterian 
 Church, pp. 39 ff. 
 
 2 The Old Log House, p. 28. 
 
Education and Religion 55 
 
 Ohio, and they stopped at Red River for the com- 
 munion. 1 In the preaching that followed, especially 
 on Monday, hardened sinners, some of them church- 
 members, were broken down. There came a tremendous 
 power upon ministers and people. In the midst of an 
 intense silence, when no man in the pulpit could find 
 voice to speak, a woman in the far end of the house 
 cried out for mercy. Soon nearly the whole congrega- 
 tion was tremendously exercised, and scores were 
 converted. From this time and place " The Great 
 Revival" spread. 
 
 This first meeting was continued for some days. 
 One man brought his family in his covered wagon, and 
 camped on the ground. Soon after, a meeting was held 
 at Muddy River, not far distant, and a number followed 
 the example of this man, some camping in the open, 
 some in their wagons, and a few beginning to use tents, 
 or else making shelters of brush. Thus began the camp- 
 meetings of America, soon to spread in every direction, 
 even back into the Eastern States. 
 
 This " Great Revival" spread with wonderful power 
 and rapidity. It was especially fostered by the Metho- 
 dists, whose ideas were not opposed to its somewhat 
 extreme manifestations. The Baptists were also con- 
 siderably affected by it, and great revivals took place in 
 their churches. Among the Presbyterians, the opposi- 
 tion of church authorities led to the secession of the re- 
 vivalists, who formed the separate church known as 
 the Cumberland Presbyterians. 3 The two chief dif- 
 ferences were one of doctrine and one of policy. In 
 the first case, the new church differed from its parent 
 by believing in a general rather than a limited atone- 
 ment. In the second case, it accepted as ministers 
 men who had not received the finished classical educa- 
 tion required by the Presbyterian Church. The COn- 
 ^edford, Methodism in Kentucky, p. 265. 
 
 2 McDonald, History of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, pp. 
 39 ff. 
 
56 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 ditions of the frontier, and the feeling of some men of 
 limited education that they were impelled to preach 
 the gospel, seemed to these revivalists to be a call from 
 God for more liberal views. And so there went out to 
 preach the gospel men often lacking in outward polish, 
 but filled with fire for the salvation of souls. 
 
 This character, indeed, came to be typical of western 
 preachers in all denominations, but particularly among 
 the Methodists. Some of the men most powerful in their 
 mission were neither scholars nor great students, ex- 
 cept of their Bibles. " Brother Gwin," said an educated 
 young minister from the East to one of these men, "how 
 is it that you are ever prepared to preach? You seem 
 to be seldom in your study, and scarcely ever read." 
 
 "Oh, my son," replied the frontier giant, "you do 
 not understand it: you preachers of your class have to 
 read and study books to master your subjects, but I 
 know what the books are made of before] they are 
 printed!" 
 
 Many were the famous characters produced on the 
 circuits of those days, men fearless in danger, unweary- 
 ing in labor, enduring in privation, powerful in exhor- 
 tation, ready in wit, and often prepared to use physical 
 as well as spiritual muscle in their combats with the devil 
 and his human agents. 
 
 Among the most eccentric and most successful was 
 Lorenzo Dow, a roving preacher whose work was not 
 confined to the mountains nor the frontier; for though 
 he labored from among the high peaks of North Caro- 
 lina to the banks of the Mississippi, and from Georgia 
 to Canada, he was well known also along the Atlantic 
 coast and even in England and Ireland. Restless and 
 eager, he continually traveled, nor would he marry until 
 he had found a young woman who would cheerfully 
 promise that she would spare him from home twelve 
 months out of thirteen. 1 
 
 proposal of marriage ran as follows: "If I am preserved, about 
 a year and a half from now I am in hopes of seeing this northern country 
 
Education and Religion 57 
 
 Lorenzo Dow journeyed, sometimes on horseback, 
 often on foot, sometimes well tricked out in new clothing 
 by his friends, only to return from a journey of hun- 
 dreds of miles in rags, and with everything of value 
 either stolen or pawned, but feeling successful hi that 
 he had preached the gospel to those who would other- 
 wise never have heard it settlers, desperadoes, In- 
 dians. Many a tune he was offered money or other 
 valuables which he would not take, lest he be called, 
 as he says, "an impostor" who loved money rather than 
 souls. Later, he himself made hundreds of dollars 
 by the sale of some of his books, which he would fre- 
 quently give for the building of meeting-houses or other 
 pin-poses of the church. 
 
 His sermons were often eccentric in form and matter, 
 yet always powerful. Though endeared to the rough 
 people of the mountains and backwoods, he not infre- 
 quently scandalized the more conventional of his Metho- 
 dist brethren, as when he one day announced to an 
 impenitent crowd that having just preached from the 
 Word of the Lord, which they rejected, he would the 
 next day preach to them from the word of the devil 
 and did so from Luke 4:6, 7. 
 
 He traveled to the most out-of-the-way places to 
 carry the gospel, crossing the North Carolina mountains 
 into Tennessee for the sole purpose of preaching to the 
 one lone settlement in those mountains, Buncombe 
 Court-house (now Asheville); and delving with equal 
 zeal into the mazes of West Virginia, where he made 
 an appointment to return and preach in exactly thirteen 
 months, on such a day and at such an hour, an appoint- 
 
 again; and if during this time you live and remain single, and find no one 
 that you like better than you do me, and would be willing to give me up 
 twelve months out of thirteen, or three years out of four, to travel, and 
 that in foreign lands, and never say, Do not go to your appointment, 
 etc. for if you should stand in the way, I should pray to God to remove 
 you, which I believe he would answer and if I find no one that I like 
 better than I do you, perhaps something further may be said upon the 
 subject." The Life of Lorenzo Dow, by himself, p. 152. 
 
58 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 ment which he filled most punctually. It was his 
 custom, indeed, to give out a string of appointments a 
 year or more ahead, and to meet them scrupulously 
 on time, though he might have to travel from Canada 
 to Mississippi to do it, sometimes in a pinch traveling 
 for several days and nights in succession, through mud, 
 rain, and cold, going from carriage to horse and then to 
 foot, in order to be at the appointed place on tune. 
 
 He was constantly dreaming dreams that forecast 
 events for him, and he believed he had what the Scotch 
 call " second sight," and that he could sometimes fore- 
 tell events for others, and even read the secrets of their 
 lives. But despite his oddities, he was a most thoroughly 
 consecrated and successful Christian laborer, and thou- 
 sands were reclaimed to the Master whose sheriff he pro- 
 claimed himself to be, and in whose name he offered a 
 great reward for the " runaways whose marks he would 
 now describe." 
 
 It was in this southwestern country, especially in the 
 great camp-meetings, under the powerful exhortations 
 of such famous preachers as James B. Finley, Jesse 
 Walker, and Peter Cartwright, that the peculiar phys- 
 ical manifestations known as "the jerks" began to appear. 
 In the midst of his discourse the preacher was apt to 
 see various ones begin nodding or jumping or jerking 
 more and more vigorously, and the infection was likely 
 to spread until almost the whole congregation would 
 be affected. Sometimes the head was snapped back- 
 ward and forward so rapidly that it would seem the neck 
 must be dislocated; or the limbs and even the whole 
 body would be jerked so violently that the person could 
 keep his feet only by grasping a tree or some other ob- 
 ject and holding on desperately. No uncommon sight 
 was a clearing next the log church, in which everything 
 had been removed except saplings cut breast-high, to 
 which the victims might resort to jerk. Or sometimes 
 the seizure would set a person to dancing, slowly, it is 
 said, and with grace. 
 
Education and Religion 59 
 
 "The jerks" affected the converted as well as the 
 impenitent, but with different effects. Those who 
 yielded themselves to it felt no discomfort, even though 
 their contortions were alarming to the onlookers, but 
 those who resisted it would experience much pain, and 
 even at times be injured by the exercise. Often by this 
 means scoffers and hardened sinners were brought to the 
 penitent seat. 
 
 The strange phenomenon was doubtless due to ex- 
 treme nervous excitement in simple, uncontrolled na- 
 tures. It was not consciously induced by the preachers, 
 who at first looked upon it with suspicion and aversion, 
 but who came finally to accept it as something beyond 
 their control and often of value in their work for the 
 people. Its manifestation passed away within a few 
 years. 
 
 The solid work of the circuit-riding minister was 
 manifested in the religious character given to the west- 
 ern country, which in the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury was found, on the whole, much more open to 
 religious influences and to the reception of truth than was 
 the more staid and settled East. To this day the South, 
 and especially the mountain country, is remarkable for 
 its religious spirit. 
 
 The great mass of the mountaineers today belong 
 to either the Baptist or the Methodist Church, and their 
 religion is the fervid, soul-storming religion of the pioneer 
 days. To them and to their preachers, hell and heaven 
 are very real places, and the way to avoid the one and 
 secure the other is through the process of regeneration, 
 preferably, because most easily, at the semi-annual 
 protracted meeting. The fervor of their proceedings in 
 these meetings shouting, crying, moaning, stamping, 
 and clapping, is apt to strike harshly upon the more 
 staid religionist, but the sincerity of the worshipers 
 is not to be questioned. 
 
 Yet there are many, in the more isolated sections, 
 who have not even the benefit of these services. Thou- 
 
60 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 sands there are who seldom hear the voice of prayer, 
 who have never seen a Bible, and who could not read it if 
 they had it. The story is told of a minister visiting for 
 the first time one of these homes far back in the moun- 
 tains, and there to a little family telling the story of the 
 Cross. They followed him with rapt faces; and when 
 he had concluded, the mother, leaning toward him, 
 whispered hoarsely: 
 
 " Stranger, you say all this happened a long time ago?" 
 "Yes," he said, " almost two thousand years ago." 
 "And they nailed him to that thar tree when he 
 hadn't done nothing to hurt 'em; only jest loved ? em?" 
 "Yes." 
 
 She leaned farther and placed her hand impressively 
 upon his knee. "Wai, stranger," she said, the tears 
 standing in her eyes, "let's hope hit ain't so!" 1 
 
 There is no more promising field, both for true re- 
 ligion and for education, than in the mountains of the 
 South. Its people believe in religion and long for edu- 
 cation. Their heritage of body and mind is the best 
 of earth's; and they need but the help it should delight 
 Christians to give, to make of them the most worthy 
 recruits for Christian service. 
 
 1 John Fox, Jr., Blue-Grass and Rhododendron, p. 23. 
 
V 
 
 THE MODERN MOUNTAINEER 
 
 THE conditions of colonial life persist today in a very 
 considerable part of the mountains. This is par- 
 ticularly true of the southern Appalachians. Those 
 portions of the Appalachian system which lie in the 
 Northern States are less isolated and have partaken 
 more of the life about them; but from Virginia to 
 Georgia and Alabama the broad extent of mountain 
 and plateau have conspired with political and social 
 causes to keep the mountaineer separate and to keep him 
 back, until he has come to represent a distinct type of 
 American. 
 
 The southern mountain country embraces an area of 
 101,880 square miles, this reckoning including 35 coun- 
 ties of West Virginia, 4 of Maryland, 42 of Virginia, 28 
 of Kentucky, 46 of Tennessee, 24 of North Carolina, 
 4 of South Carolina, 26 of Georgia, and 17 of Alabama. 
 This section is about 600 miles long and averages 200 
 miles in breadth. It is twice as large as the State of New 
 York; it would cover New England, New Jersey, Dela- 
 ware, and two Marylands; and is much larger than Eng- 
 land, Wales, and Scotland together. Its population is 
 somewhat over four million, more than twice as many 
 as the thirteen colonies held at the time of the Revo- 
 lution, yet little more today than the State of Ohio 
 (which has an area of less than half that of the moun- 
 
 (61) 
 
62 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 tains), and it is less than the city of Greater New York. 
 
 Four million souls are too many to neglect, and their 
 value and importance to American and Christian life 
 are enhanced, not lessened, by their scattered state. 
 The closer men crowd together, the less power does the 
 individual have, both because of his environment and 
 because of his education; but a people spread out until 
 every man has room for development of thought and re- 
 source, is a people of whom "one of the least is over a 
 hundred, and the greatest over a thousand." 
 
 It is not to be understood, however, that all these 
 four million are ignorant or poverty-stricken or helpless. 
 This enumeration includes the valley-dwellers as well 
 as those on the mountain tops, and as they range from 
 owners of rich bottom lands to those of thin, rocky peaks, 
 so in practically the same order they range from pros- 
 perous and cultured modern citizens to ill -nourished 
 and backward men who need help. 
 
 For convenience the mountaineers may be divided 
 into three classes, though this is a rather arbitrary ar- 
 rangement, since the types and classes are much more 
 varied, shading almost imperceptibly into one another. 
 
 In the first class are the prosperous valley-dwellers, 
 descendants for the most part of those early settlers 
 who had the first choice of the best locations. The val- 
 leys of Virginia and Tennessee contain not only fertile 
 farms, but cities like Staunton, Roanoke, Bristol, Knox- 
 ville, and Chattanooga. In the same class may be put 
 such a broad and accessible section as the French Broad 
 Plateau in North Carolina, with Asheville, its metropolis, 
 and other prosperous cities. 
 
 The people who constitute this class are abreast 
 of other thriving sections of the United States. They 
 have the same comforts, the same educational, social, 
 and wealth-producing opportunities, and they consti- 
 tute one of the most important elements in the progress 
 of the South and of the nation. Their ability, enter- 
 prise, and prosperity are a promise of what other moun- 
 
The Modern Mountaineer 63 
 
 tain classes may become with equal opportunities. 
 Upon the corn and wheat lands of the valleys and the 
 river bottoms may be seen the latest farm machinery, 
 drawn by big Percheron horses or heavy mules. Here 
 and there, even, . is seen the traction engine, pulling 
 gang-plows and harrows. Large dairy barns and silos 
 are no unusual sight, and in some sections fine herds 
 and flocks or beautiful orchards and vineyards proclaim 
 the cause of the prosperity typified in roomy, com- 
 fortable, and up-to-date dwellings. 
 
 Besides agriculture, which remains the chief industry, 
 there are other important interests mining, lumber- 
 ing, and manufacturing. The economic advantages of 
 this section are being more fully realized and exploited 
 every day, not always to the moral nor even the finan- 
 cial advantage of the mountaineer. 
 
 As a rule, these prosperous mountaineers are inter- 
 ested in their poorer and less fortunate neighbors, who, 
 while more abundant in isolated regions, are yet to a 
 considerable degree scattered among them. 
 
 " Foreign missions!' 7 exclaimed a bank president 
 and church deacon who was no Missionary Baptist, 
 " talk to me of sending my dollars along with your preach- 
 ers to the heathen, when every day I deal with men who 
 can't write their names, who can't scratch together 
 enough hog and hominy to keep their children, and whose 
 only prayers are cuss words ! Start a work to teach these 
 men and then* children how to live like Christians in 
 this Christian land, and you have my support. That's 
 my foreign mission!" 
 
 The mountaineer employer, be he small or great, 
 generally has hi him not so much a philanthropy as a 
 benevolence toward the people he employs. His sym- 
 pathies go out to the individual rather than the group. 
 He may in times of stress exclaim against the shiftless- 
 ness or the small necessities of his employees, which per- 
 mit them to knock off work at a critical time. He may 
 rage against the independence and the sensitiveness of 
 
64 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 a race who will hardly stoop to service and never to any- 
 thing they count humiliation or insult. But when it 
 comes to dealing with the individual, he is lenient to 
 faults and generous to needs. 
 
 Take, for example, Mr. George, the manager of a 
 well equipped plant in the North Carolina mountains, 
 whose workmen not infrequently felt the need of some- 
 thing more diverting than humdrum labor, and whose 
 sprees and escapades were a matter of constant exas- 
 peration to their long-suffering employer. 
 
 "There's that Zeb Bean/ 7 he confided one evening 
 to a visitor in his home. "Got a wife and six children. 
 Sick for two months this fall, and the company car- 
 ried him along through it all. But when he gets well 
 and earning again, what do you think he does? Buys 
 little gewgaws to hang round his children's necks when 
 they're needing shoes, and runs an account at the com- 
 pany store for corn-meal and bacon, while, if he gets a 
 dollar, he dives straight for a blind tiger. And I told 
 him, ' Now, Zeb, you Ve got to let liquor alone, and you've 
 got to walk straight if you don't want to get fired.' 
 
 "Comes Christmas, and Zeb pipes up for a dollar. 
 'What for?' I says. 'Want to celebrate,' he says, 'it's 
 Christmas, and I got to celebrate, ain't I?' 'You'll 
 celebrate by keeping sober and reducing your account,' 
 I told him. But what does the fellow do? Somewhere 
 or other he gets hold of a dime, buys that much black 
 powder, and fills an old wagon-skein with it. His slow 
 match proves a fast one, and he blows two fingers off 
 his right hand, and lays himself up for another six 
 weeks. And now who's going to take care of him this 
 time, I'd like to know." 
 
 "Oh, you are, of course!" said his wife, with a quiet 
 little laugh. Mr George's wrath collapsed into a mellow 
 chuckle, that bespoke repentance for his indignation, 
 indulgence for his erring employee. "I reckon I am," 
 he said. 
 
 Next morning, over the frozen ground, there came 
 
Relief Map of Appalachia. 
 
 " The mountains of Appalachia run in two great parallel 
 ranges ." Page 79. 
 
tfi 
 
The Modern Mountaineer 65 
 
 to the door a barefooted little boy whose ostensible 
 errand was a transparent excuse. He was brought in 
 to the fire, and warmed and fed and talked with, and 
 laden for home with a basket packed by the good lady 
 of the house with substantiate and delicacies. 
 
 " How's your papa, son? Tell him to hurry up and 
 get well. Tell him, ' Don't worry, everything will be 
 all right/ " cooed the stern magnate of last evening. 
 The barefooted boy was a son of Zeb. 
 
 Such charity as a practise may not be according to 
 the modern theories of scientific philanthropy, wherein 
 a departmented bureau lists cases, investigates appeals, 
 sifts evidences, collects gifts, distributes bundles, and 
 presides over mass dinners. Undiscerning personal 
 charity, we hear, robs the giver and pauperizes the re- 
 cipient. It may have that effect among those huddles 
 of humanity that are the dregs of civilization; and, 
 despite the natural independence of the highlander, 
 it may have that tendency in the mountains. But 
 one thing is certain, it accords more nearly with the let- 
 ter, and our hearts tell us with the spirit of the 
 Master's teachings; and its prevalence in the mountains 
 among both rich and poor makes an atmosphere of 
 brotherhood that may possibly count for more than 
 scientific exactness. Efforts for the betterment of the 
 poorer mountain classes, be they free-handed or card- 
 cataloged, will find among the prosperous mountain- 
 eers a strong support. 
 
 In the second class may be put those who occupy 
 sections less accessible, and yet of fair natural advan- 
 tages. There are people in little valleys and considerable 
 plateaus who, if they had access to good markets and 
 to the advantages of a broader life, would be not at all 
 behind the rest of the world, but who, because they have 
 not such access, live to a great extent in then* own world, 
 comfortable, easy, though usually hard-working, shut 
 in to a live but rather narrow world that has little knowl- 
 edge of things outside, and not much concern for them. 
 
 5 
 
66 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Many of this class are fairly well-to-do, but their stand- 
 ards of living correspond more fully to those of the eight- 
 eenth century than to those of the twentieth. They are 
 content with poor housing, meager equipment, and 
 unenterprising methods of work. 
 
 With others, this condition, irrespective of choice, 
 is the necessity of their poverty. They may own a 
 " beast,' 7 which means a horse or a mule, but just as 
 likely then- dependence for plowing and hauling is on 
 a "jinny" or an ox. The one-horse wagon is coming to 
 be very common, yet beyond the land of good roads 
 the home-made sled, with runners hewn from the tough 
 sourwood, is made to bear the burdens too heavy for 
 bent shoulders. The one-horse turning plow, preferably 
 the reversible hillside plow, has taken the place of our 
 grandfather's wooden share (discarded specimens of 
 which may still be found in the mountains), but it is 
 far from having driven out the "bull-tongue," which 
 may be described as a single-toothed cultivator with 
 wide-flaring wings. With many men, this plow is their 
 sole horse tool, being used first to scrabble the ground 
 two or three inches deep for the planting, and after- 
 wards, along with the heavy iron hand hoe, to cultivate 
 the crop. Add to these implements the ax and the gun, 
 and you have fairly represented the complete mechan- 
 ical equipment of the far-back mountaineer. 
 
 There are fields, indeed, too steep for any plow to 
 cultivate or any beast to work upon, and there the soil 
 is never touched except with the hoe. John Fox is not 
 to be accused of hyperbole when he tells of one who 
 broke his neck by falling out of his own cornfield. Such 
 fields are usually good for only one or two seasons of 
 cultivation after having been cleared of then- forest 
 growth. By that tune their fertility has mostly dis- 
 appeared, half of it upward into the corn, half down- 
 ward into the creek. If the owner can afford to seed it, 
 he may keep his field as a permanent pasture, but he 
 will do better to let it grow up to natural grass and brush. 
 
The Modern Mountaineer 67 
 
 Such fields, it goes without saying, are not the moun- 
 taineer's preference, nor are they any large part of the 
 farm lands. "Hobson's choice" they are to the man 
 whose level land consists of a few irregular square rods 
 of " branch bottom." 
 
 The typical home is the log cabin. Year by year, 
 as the capital and enterprise of the outside world push 
 farther back, eating up the resources of the mountains, 
 some of that world's fashions and a little of its money 
 come to change the standards of living. So, where yes- 
 terday the frame dwelling, when it appeared at all, was 
 the mark of the great man of the community, today it 
 is elbowing and shoving its humble log neighbor back 
 into the coves and through the gaps. Yet the latter is 
 still so greatly in the majority that it has right to give 
 its name to its land "The log-cabin country." 
 
 The log house is of all sizes and of all degrees of ex- 
 cellence, but its unit is the single room, rough-floored 
 and ceiled, with a big stone chimney at one end, a door 
 at front and one at back, and possibly a window or two. 
 A narrow front porch of plank, and a lean-to of the same 
 material at the back, represent the first improvements. 1 
 As prosperity attends him, the mountaineer may add 
 another log room or two alongside the first, covering 
 them with one roof, and usually leaving an open passage- 
 way between them. 
 
 The stone chimney, when carefully and conscien- 
 tiously made, is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. 
 Often composed of hewn stone, and hiding a great part 
 of the cabin's end with its broad base, it stands the 
 symbol of stability and massive beauty. Within, as 
 you face its flaming, glowing depths, the abode of warmth 
 and cheer and savory cooking, you speedily become 
 as much its devotee as the veriest child of the land. 
 
 "I ain't no use," declares Uncle John Andrews, "for 
 
 l ln the mountains the sawed "boards" of the North, no matter 
 how thin, are "plank," while "boards" are the hand-rived 
 that cover the roof. 
 
68 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 these here little ginky black sheet-iron contraptions 
 they calls stoves. I cain't git proper heat lessen I kin 
 see fire. Set up a stove, and y're in a black hell. They 
 ain't no place to set, and they ain't no place to luk, 
 and they ain't no place to spit! Gi' me a fireplace, er 
 turn me out o' doors." And in this land of forests, 
 certainly there can be no excuse for abolishing just 
 yet that maker of the home, the open fireplace. 
 
 The house itself is almost certain to be of hewn logs; 
 that is, hewn on two sides, one to face inward for a 
 somewhat smooth wall, and one to face outward to 
 give an appearance of finish to the building. Few take 
 the trouble to square the log on all four sides. The round 
 sides are turned toward each other, and the cracks 
 made by their failure to meet are chinked with wedges 
 of wood and wet clay or mortar. Important crevices 
 which appear in tune may be plugged up; unimportant 
 chinks help in the ventilation, in which the wide fire- 
 place and the open door are the most important fac- 
 tors. 
 
 The habit of open-door is a daytime habit, born both 
 of hospitality and of desire for light and air. At night 
 the door is shut and fastened, doubtless a precaution 
 that dates from the days of Indian warfare, and yet one 
 not unmixed many times with a fear of night air. If 
 the beds be in the room with the fireplace, however, 
 as some of them usually are, there can be no complete 
 stoppage of ventilation; for there are bound to be cracks 
 somewhere, and a wide and warm chimney throat to 
 take the draft up and out. 
 
 Hospitality is a cardinal virtue of the mountaineer. 
 He usually has a spare bed for company. If not, and he 
 knows you cannot fare better at a neighbor's, he will 
 make sure that you are accommodated, though the 
 children or his wife and himself have to sleep upon 
 the floor. The farther back in the mountains, the truer 
 this is; nearness to cities and the railroads and the in- 
 coming "furriner" have made the mountaineer both 
 
The Modern Mountaineer 69 
 
 more suspicious of his ability to please the tastes of the 
 stranger, and more greedy of the stranger 's money. 
 It is indeed rather uncommon now-a-days, except in 
 some of the most out-of-the-way places, to receive ac- 
 commodation free. A quarter or a half-dollar is usu- 
 ally expected for a night's lodging with meals. But 
 for all that, the log cabin wears no air of the hostelry. 
 If the stranger knows how to fit in with his fellow-men, 
 he gets from his stay in the log-cabin home a warmth 
 of welcome, a freedom of spirit, but slightly bitten by 
 the tinge of barter that comes with the passing of sil- 
 ver. 
 
 The traveler fresh from the pampering homes and 
 restaurants of the cities, may find the mountain fare 
 meager. It is at least the habit of the mountaineer 
 primed, perhaps, by experience to offer his hospitality 
 with an apology for its plainness: "You-all are sure 
 welcome ef you can eq'al our fare." Yet in season 
 one may find at many a table a surprizing variety and 
 in superabundance. What the mountaineer eats, for 
 the most part he raises on his own land, "hog and 
 hominy" being the most common staples, supplemented 
 by a greater or smaller variety of vegetables, grains, 
 and fruits, according to the enterprise of the individual. 
 
 Though the cook-stove is a not uncommon possession, 
 even of the far back mountaineer, the fireplace is 
 the standby of perhaps the majority of the cooks. The 
 iron pot of our great grandmothers yet swings on the 
 crane in the mountain fireplace, and the "Dutch oven", 
 or "bake kettle," as it is most commonly called hi the 
 mountains, still does its duty amidst the glowing coals 
 on the hearth. Have you ever eaten real corn pone 
 white corn meal, cold water, and salt, patted into a 
 long, thick cake, and deposited with its twin in the bake 
 kettle, to remain till it comes out a golden brown, crisp, 
 crumbly, nutty, and altogether sweet with the natural 
 sweetness of the corn? Such corn pone is first cousin, 
 at least, with the cakes that angels ate in the hospitable 
 
70 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 pilgrims' tent on the plains of Mamre. Not so tempting 
 is the fried pork or the grease-soaked beans that usu- 
 ally accompany it; but the stranger of simple habits 
 may, if his mind agree, fare sumptuously every day and 
 grow fat with corn pone and sweet milk or buttermilk. 
 Moreover, nearly everywhere in the mountains, and 
 nearly always, he may be " comforted with apples." 
 
 In the corner or on the porch of many a home stands 
 the spinning-wheel. Its hours of duty today are not so 
 many as in generations past; for though occasionally 
 a loom may be found to weave its welcome threads into 
 linsey-woolsey and jeans, homespun has for the most 
 part retreated before the cheap " store goods"; and 
 carding and spinning have more regard to the need of 
 socks and mittens than of shirts and dresses. Buckskin 
 and coonskin also have surrendered to the shoe and hat 
 industries of the lowlanders. Yet still the mountaineer 
 keeps much of the skill and ingenuity which charac- 
 terized our independent forefathers, and with his ax 
 and knife makes himself the chief part of America's 
 waning guild of home arts and crafts. 
 
 The educational and religious advantages of these 
 mountaineers are not overgreat. The mountain school 
 may run three or four months in the year; the circuit- 
 rider comes once or twice a month to the little log church. 
 Protracted meeting in spring and fall (neighborhood 
 equivalent for the old-tune camp-meeting) is the great 
 emotional outlet of natures at other times pent within 
 the barriers of a stern self-control or a wistful shame. 
 
 Also, there is the singing-school, attended mostly 
 by the young people. The singing-master, that modern 
 successor of the old-time bard, goes peripateting from 
 settlement to settlement, calling together at the school- 
 house or church such musical souls as have been stirred 
 at the country dance with "Old Dan Tucker," or at the 
 revival with "I Feel Like Traveling On." High, sweet 
 voices have many of these lasses, though unfortunately 
 sometimes spoiled by the effort to shout in singing. 
 
The Modern Mountaineer 71 
 
 And as for the boys, if it were not for the tobacco which 
 makes some of their voices husky, there could be no 
 clearer, sweeter, farther-carrying melody than the sing- 
 ing and the yodeling that come out of the early and 
 sometimes the late night. 
 
 The singing-master holds perhaps a ten days' school, 
 and with his shaped notes 1 and his rousing time and 
 his very real enthusiasm, he does no little service in 
 fitting the class of Bethany Church for the singing con- 
 test next winter with North Star Church over in Wild- 
 cat Holler. 
 
 As for the school, that fares according to public 
 sentiment. The state furnishes a three or four, or even 
 six months 7 term of school, and the districts are usually 
 small enough to make the farthest home but two or three 
 miles distant. Yet in some places the population is 
 so sparse that the distances must be far greater, and 
 if you go far enough into the recesses of the hills, you 
 will find plenty of children who never have gone to school 
 and bid fan- never to go. Yet the parents are almost 
 always eager for their children to go to school; that is, 
 after "laying-by time" and outside " fodder-pulling 
 time," and when it is not too cold. The temperature 
 rarely reaches zero in the Southern mountains for even 
 one night, but thin clothing and sometimes entire ab- 
 sence of shoes and stockings make a 20 or 30 mark 
 forbidding weather to careful parents. To avoid the 
 severest parts of the winter, school usually is begun in 
 July or August, and closed before Christmas. But this 
 time must be broken into by the older boys and girls 
 when the fodder is ready to strip and the corn to pull. 
 
 !" Shaped notes" are written the same as ordinary notes, except 
 that their shapes denote the syllables of the scale; thus: 
 
 do ^ re ^7, mio, fa i^, sol o, la n, ti <? 
 
 Obviously, the art of note-reading is made easy by this method, but 
 those who learn to sing by shaped notes, though they see them on the 
 staff, are usually helpless before ordinary written music. 
 
72 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 This breaking of time is disastrous to scholarship, and 
 it must be admitted that the commonest arts of read- 
 nig and writing are but shoddy accomplishments with 
 all but a favored few. Arithmetic, especially "head 
 figuring/ ' is more in line with common pursuits, and 
 finds more than one adept where he would be least sus- 
 pected. 
 
 As for the teachers, they are a devoted but scarcely 
 a peerless class. With less than half a year's term, and 
 that on small pay, the teacher secured is seldom all 
 that could be desired. Of the men teachers, who are 
 disproportionately common in the mountains, prac- 
 tically all depend upon farming or some other support 
 for the most of the year, and have but little chance to 
 improve then 1 talents by further training. And as for 
 the women, they follow the world-wide custom of teach- 
 ing until they get a good offer of 'marriage. Yet there 
 are some who are trained and Capable teachers in- 
 variably those who for shorter or longer time have been 
 won to the work by love rather than by money. 
 
 Let one of these, who, of all the interpreters of the 
 mountains, has written the most illuminating and faith- 
 ful account, paint for us a closing picture of the moun- 
 tain school: 
 
 "Our log church stands in the forest. There is scarce 
 enough space cleared around it for a playground. Wood- 
 peckers drum on its roof in the daytime, and whip- 
 poorwills sing there at night. Acorns drop upon it hi 
 October, with resounding taps that startle all the little 
 ones within. Its walls are laid of heavy pine timbers, 
 squared roughly and well matched together, the cracks 
 chinked with chips driven in slantwise, and daubed with 
 native clay. There is no belfry. The door is at one 
 end, and the high pulpit at the other. 
 
 "At one side is a stone chimney, massive as a door, 
 whose fireplace on cold days seems about to swallow 
 the huddled school. It requires the strength of all the 
 larger boys together to bring in a backlog. When I 
 
The Modern Mountaineer 73 
 
 was a child, I remember a number of us, on the heels 
 of some prank, once hid in its sooty depths from the rod 
 of a teacher, much as the Indians took shelter in Nicko- 
 jack from the pursuing forces of Sevier. How could 
 we have kept school without the aid of that hospitable 
 cavern? We roasted nuts in it, and potatoes, and ap- 
 ples, and pigs' tails brought from home. We even boiled 
 eggs there in a tin bucket when Mis' Robbins' old blue 
 hen obligingly stole her nest under the floor. We watched 
 the sparks fly up the chimney when we should have been 
 studying. We told fortunes, making and naming marks 
 in the ashes. And oh, the visions we saw in its smoke, 
 the futures we painted in its ruddy coals! 
 
 "Still it stands, the mighty chimney, and now it 
 is I who must sometimes chase the little fellows, laugh- 
 ing and squealing, into its dark recesses and out again. 
 With so few pupils, little discipline is necessary, and we 
 often spend the hot afternoons of September outside 
 with our books old McGuffey readers, blue-back 
 spellers, Testaments, or whatever comes to hand, scat- 
 tered about on the ground. If the young minds wander 
 afield with the scampering and flitting of little brothers 
 of treetop and burrow, what matter? Perhaps they 
 learn at such times something not to be found between 
 the covers of Webster. 
 
 "As for that, our study is never confined to the 
 text-book long. The first hour of our day is devoted to 
 reading in four classes of different grades, the second 
 to arithmetic in three. Then we spend about thirty 
 minutes in drawing maps and talking about the country 
 represented, a primitive method of studying geog- 
 raphy, but the best possible in default of more expen- 
 sive books. Next we write either a spelling lesson or 
 a composition on some out-door subject, until it is time 
 for the noon 'ree-cess.' Dinner, eaten in the shade 
 outside, is over in a few minutes, and then playtime 
 scatters the little folks through the woods, making play- 
 houses and bending down saplings for 'ridey-hosses,' 
 
74 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 until it is time to recall them by rapping on the door 
 with a stick, as if the hollow house were a giant drum. 
 
 "The afternoon is very much like the morning, ex- 
 cept that there is a class in such grammar as we can 
 manage without a text-book. Last of all, I give them 
 something to take home with them to think over and 
 dream about an object-lesson, a story, a poem, or a 
 simple talk on some bit of natural science." 
 
 This second class, who make up the bulk of the true 
 mountain people distinct from the valley dwellers 
 are among the most valuable elements in America's 
 population. They best represent that dauntless, daring 
 race, Saxon and Celt, that not only conquered the moun- 
 tains, but that has been foremost in the winning of the 
 West. Elsewhere in America, East, North, and West, 
 the blood of Britain has mingled with that of the Teu- 
 ton, the Latin, and the Slav. Here alone dwells the 
 triple-welded American English, Irish, and Scotch, 
 with an Elizabethan language and a Cromwellian tem- 
 per, speaking his thoughts with an unconventional 
 force, and doing his deeds with a resolute directness. 
 He is not lawless, but he is a lord of the law. In an 
 abstract sense "the law" a phrase frequently on his 
 tongue is the personification of justice, order, and 
 dignity of government, to which he is ardently attached. 
 But concretely, his intimate contact with the state's 
 statutes has taught him that "the law" is a great game 
 in which he whose wits are sharpest and whose pocket- 
 book is longest, may win. Sometimes, therefore, his 
 reason tells him, it is more to his advantage and satis- 
 faction to settle his troubles by more primitive law. 
 There are very few grown men in the mountains who 
 have not had some contact with "the law," either as 
 principal or accessory or witness. Court day finds the 
 county-seat crowded; and trials and decisions hold at 
 least equal value as mental food with sermons and re- 
 vivals. 
 
 B. Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, pp. 3-6. 
 
The Modern Mountaineer 75 
 
 ^ There is a third class, consisting of the poorest men 
 of the mountains, those living in the distant gorges 
 or " coves," on the mountain sides or mountain tops, 
 and in the rough hill land. They are also to be found 
 scattered all through the other communities, infre- 
 quently landowners, more often renters, sometimes little 
 more than paupers. They are usually housed in a 
 ragged relative of the log cabin, though sometimes more 
 forlornly in a slatternly plank hut. In such a house the 
 chimney has degenerated into a cobblestone-and-mud 
 daub, or even perhaps, into a stick chimney, sometimes 
 carried little above the height of the fireplace, so that 
 "you can sit in the chimblyand spit outdoors/' Cracks 
 in the walls, in the floors, and often between the curled 
 "boards" of the roof, invite the weather, and the "sage 
 broom" a bundle of broom-sedge or "sage grass" 
 restricts its sphere of usefulness to the uneven, rock 
 hearth. A patch of corn and beans, a hog or two, make 
 most of their worldly wealth. Down in the "settlemints" 
 the men will work, perhaps, when occasion and neces- 
 sity agree, at odd jobs of crop-tending or wood- 
 chopping or road-mending, which will yield them 
 seventy-five cents or a dollar. In sections where no 
 such opportunities are found, the abundant leisure time 
 is spent hunting or sunning or "jest waitin'." 
 
 It is really unfair to the best of this class to count 
 them under the same head as the worst, and it is only 
 their economic condition that invites it. For while some, 
 from mere lack of opportunity, or perhaps of worldly- 
 wiseness, are wofully poor in material things, they are 
 possessed of much moral and no little mental power, 
 and are capable, if given instruction and opportunity, 
 of rising into the second class. On the other hand, 
 some of them are degenerates and the sons of degenerates 
 a class that is by no means confined to the moun- 
 tains. They can be known and classified only by a per- 
 sonal and individual acquaintance. But a natural dis- 
 tinction will at first sight be made between those who 
 
76 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 are poor because they live in the most inaccessible and 
 isolated regions and those who remain poor though in 
 the midst of more prosperous communities. 
 
 It is chiefly from this third class, though partly also 
 from the second, that the popular conception of the moun- 
 taineer is gained. He makes the most picturesque 
 character in fiction; and fiction is the road by which the 
 average American travels outside his own narrow neigh- 
 borhood bounds. The ideas of the mountaineer which 
 he thus gains are about as correct as the ideas of the life 
 of Indian, cowboy, soldier, and jolly tar, gained by the 
 boy who reads the Henty and Alger type of book. 
 
 While, because of his long isolation, the backward 
 type of mountaineer may have peculiarities of speech 
 habit, and idea, he will, upon thorough acquaintance, 
 be found as human and as natural as any other neighbor, 
 with the same faults of temper, prejudice, and self- 
 interest, and the same virtues a little emphasized 
 of curiosity, hospitality, and brotherly kindness, to 
 which all the world is heir. 
 
 There are besides, within the mountain country, 
 some sectional differences of character, according with 
 the same general laws of isolation or accessibility. 
 Roughly speaking, the mountain regions of Virginia, 
 North Carolina, and Georgia are more accessible than 
 those of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. Partly 
 in consequence of this, it is in Kentucky that the blood 
 feuds occur which have unjustly branded the whole 
 mountain people in the popular mind; and it is on the 
 broad Cumberland plateau of the more southern States, 
 alongside the prosperous Tennessee Valley, that the 
 densest ignorance and most hopeless economic condi- 
 tions exist. " There are places on S Mountain," 
 is a phrase with which other mountaineers are wont to 
 begin stories of conditions below their own. The other 
 States have these conditions, or conditions approach- 
 ing these, in plenty, but they are not so typical of large 
 sections, for the simple reason that the eastern moun- 
 
The Modern Mountaineer 77 
 
 tains are penetrated more fully by means of communi- 
 cation with the outside world. These facts make each 
 State and each community in each State a separate 
 problem by itself, corresponding only in general features 
 to the great whole, and requiring study and peculiar 
 treatment each for itself. 
 
 Beyond the mountains, in the piedmont, or foothill 
 sections, there is a people kin somewhat to the moun- 
 taineer, and having the same needs. Indeed, through- 
 out the rural South the state of society is practically 
 that of the mountains, with the addition, however, 
 of the upper crust of the aristocracy and the bottom 
 crust now more or less upheaved of the negro. 
 It was under slavery that the poorer or less successful 
 white man was forced away from the richest lands of 
 the South and up into the foothills. He lacked, and 
 lacks today, the same advantages that the mountaineer 
 lacks, without all the compensating advantages of the 
 mountaineer, hi the inspiring life of the great heights, 
 the far views, and the healthfulness of his elevated 
 region. Some writers declare, also, that a greater pro- 
 portion of outlaws and degenerates mingled with the 
 inhabitants of the foothills than with those of the moun- 
 tains. However that may be, the esteem of the wealthy 
 lowlander was given more to the mountaineer than 
 to the foothiller, his contempt for the latter being pre- 
 served today hi the various opprobrious terms used for 
 the hillsmen, from Carolina around through Georgia 
 and Alabama to Tennessee, such as, " redneck," "sand- 
 hiller," "corn cracker," "mudsill," and "hill billie." 
 
 Nevertheless, that the foothiller packed opportunity 
 more than ability has been proved since the upheaval 
 of the Civil War, by his increasing activity hi the public 
 life of the South. For two generations he has been com- 
 ing more and more to the front hi politics and educa- 
 tion; and many of the leaders in public life in the South 
 are from this class. The mountaineer and the foothiller 
 together may boast that slavery gave them only a tern- 
 
78 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 porary eclipse; for in the early days of the nation they 
 were the producers of such national figures as Jackson 
 and Clay; even hi the death throes of slavery they brought 
 forth such men as Lincoln; and today the voices of then* 
 sons are heard in State and national councils more fully 
 than is generally realized. Dry soil of wonderful promise, 
 they await only the living streams of education and 
 social and economic opportunity to bear the fruits of 
 civilization and culture. And out of their ranks, deeply 
 spiritual as they are by nature and training, may the 
 church gain for itself, for the world, and for God, heroes 
 of faith and action to stand in the ranks of the last 
 great battle for truth. 
 
VI 
 THE HEART OF APPALACHIA 
 
 THE Potomac marks the northern boundary of Ap- 
 palachia. This is the ancient application of the 
 term. To the earliest settlers the Indians to the south- 
 west were known as the Appalachians, and from them 
 the mountains gained their name. While today the 
 term is made to cover the whole system of the eastern 
 highlands, in a distinctive sense it applies only to the 
 Southern mountains. Appalachia is set off by its heights, 
 its climate, its products, and its people, from the lands 
 surrounding it. It may perhaps be allowed to extend 
 as far as the Alleghanies take it into Pennsylvania, 
 but it has no kinship with the Catskills, the Adiron- 
 dacks, the Green or the White Mountains, much less 
 with the plains. They belong to another world. 
 
 The mountains of Appalachia run in two great 
 parallel ranges, beginning in Pennsylvania and trend- 
 ing southwest. The one is the Blue Ridge, the other is 
 the Allegheny and Cumberland system. Between these 
 two ranges lies a great trough-like valley, cut into three 
 parts. The northernmost is in Pennsylvania and Mary- 
 land, where it is known as the Cumberland Valley. 
 With this, hi our study of the Southern mountaineers, 
 we will not deal. There remain, then, two great divi- 
 sions of the valley south of the Potomac. The first is 
 the Shenandoah, or more broadly, the valley of Virginia, 
 
 (79) 
 
8o The Men of the Mountains 
 
 under which name it continues to near the southwest- 
 ern corner of the State. Here the valley is broken by 
 cross ridges, in the midst of which the New River flows 
 from the highlands of North Carolina across the Great 
 Valley and northward through the Alleghanies. But con- 
 tinuing southwestwardly, the Great Valley quickly slides 
 down into the valley of the Tennessee, the upper part 
 of which is divided, according to its several head-streams 
 which flow therein, into the Holston, the Clinch, and the 
 Powell valleys. 
 
 This great Appalachian Valley divides the mountains 
 into two grand divisions, which, by the transverse ridges 
 in lower Virginia and between Tennessee and Kentucky, 
 are made into four. In the northern section, the valley 
 of Virginia lies in the eastern part of the mountain mass, 
 there being only the Blue Ridge between it and the low- 
 lands, while the great body of the mountains is to the 
 west, in Kentucky and West Virginia. In the southern 
 division, on the contrary, the Tennessee Valley leaves 
 to the east the wider stretch of mountain country, 
 where the Blue Ridge broadens out, making an elevated 
 plateau hi western North Carolina, between the Blue 
 Ridge proper and the Great Smoky Mountains. To the 
 west of the Tennessee Valley lie the somewhat narrower 
 Cumberland Mountains or Plateau. The general char- 
 acter of the ranges to the east is that of true mountains, 
 with rounded peaks that mark then 1 individuality by 
 rising above their connecting ridges; while those to the 
 west, in Kentucky and Tennessee, are in the nature of 
 elevated plateaus, their faces making abrupt cliffs and 
 their tops broad, rolling country. 
 
 Below this mountain system, especially on the east 
 and the south, which look toward the sea, is the gradual 
 descent known as the piedmont or foothills. Next to the 
 mountains the piedmont is rough and heaped with high 
 hills, and the population is practically the same as that 
 of the mountains. Farther toward the coastal plain 
 the piedmont settles down into rolling or almost level 
 
The Heart of Appalachia 81 
 
 country; and in this section, generally speaking, is found 
 the highest development of agriculture and of manu- 
 factures. 
 
 To the west of the mountains the character of the 
 country is slightly different. In Tennessee the Cumber- 
 land Plateau gradually descends toward the west and, 
 except where the great river basins cut it deeply, glides 
 almost imperceptibly into the lowlands. In Kentucky 
 and West Virginia, the rough, hilly, mountainous land 
 west of the main ranges is of a character to make it 
 popularly included among the mountains. The Blue- 
 grass country, which lies just outside the westernmost 
 of the Kentucky hills or mountains, is an undulating 
 plain stretching away toward the Mississippi. 
 
 If, now, we would see more particularly the domain 
 of the American highlanders, let us follow the trail of 
 their fathers, that long trail that leads from the gorge 
 of the Potomac at Harper's Ferry up to the backwater 
 districts, and there divides, running one way into the 
 mountains of West Virginia, another into the table- 
 lands of Carolina, and yet another the chief est trail 
 down into the valley of the Tennessee and through 
 Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. 
 
 Upon our left, as we go up the beautiful valley of 
 the Shenandoah, lie the walls of the Blue Ridge, whose 
 forbidding heights daunted so many generations of our 
 English forebears. Yet the Blue Ridge, for all its half 
 a dozen parallel ridges within its sixteen miles' breadth, 
 is not impassable, and through its water-gaps and passes 
 the English did finally sweep hi to join the steady cur- 
 rent of Scotch-Irish that soon began to settle the valley. 
 
 But across the valley to the west rise abruptly the 
 limestone cliffs of the Alleghanies. Small wonder that 
 the pioneers grew discouraged before these forbidding 
 ramparts; for the Alleghanies oppose to western prog- 
 ress not one height only, but ridge after ridge of per- 
 pendicular walls carved out of its limestone bed. 
 If, as the settlers entered the Great Valley at its lowest 
 6 
 
$2 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 point, by the Potomac, they turned their eyes to the 
 westward, they saw their way barred by that first out- 
 post of the Alleghanies, the great North Mountain, 
 whose lines faded out to the southward only to reveal 
 the Shenandoah Mountains behind. And if through 
 such a water-gap as that of the James at Clifton Forge, 
 two hundred miles and better up the valley, they should 
 win their way through the Shenandoahs to the valley 
 of the mineral springs, it was but to be faced at last 
 by the still unbroken battle-line of the main Allegha- 
 nies, with a hundred miles of like country behind it. 
 
 So the pioneer, who had no need to seek the hard- 
 ship and danger which were always seeking him, kept 
 his face still turned up the easier way of the valley, 
 finding his home therein whenever he could, or pressing 
 on to the fair lands of Tennessee and the Kentucky 
 Blue-grass. 
 
 Well might the homeseeker choose his home in the 
 valley of Virginia while there remained homes to be pre- 
 empted; for that lap of the mountains was the fairest 
 land in all Virginia; and till today it keeps its boast. 
 Twenty miles apart, the Blue Ridge and the Allegha- 
 nies stand to guard it with their heights; and in the 
 midst, running hi the long hollows of the hills, flow the 
 streams of the Shenandoah. The soils of this valley, 
 formed from decaying limestone, are the richest in the 
 State. At an average altitude of 1,200 feet, its climate 
 misses the heat of the lowlands, and its products are 
 those of the northern temperate section. With its wheat 
 and other small grains, as well as corn, the valley has 
 ever been the granary of the State, and it is no less fa- 
 mous for its production of fruits, especially of apples. 
 
 Strictly speaking, the valley can be called the Shen- 
 andoah no more than two hundred miles from the 
 Potomac, for there the headwaters of the northward flow- 
 ing Shenandoah begin. Within these bounds, the three 
 chief cities are Winchester at the lower end, the 
 first town of the valley; Lexington, the seat of Washing- 
 
The Heart of Appalachia 83 
 
 ton and Lee University; and Staunton, at the upper 
 end, a city of some fifteen thousand inhabitants, the 
 center and shipping-point of a wide agricultural dis- 
 trict, and the seat of growing manufactures. 
 
 Above Staunton the Great Valley, while keeping 
 still its trough-like character between the chief ranges, 
 becomes for another two hundred miles the debatable 
 land of the great water systems. As the fingers of the 
 Shenandoah leave off clutching at the hills, the James 
 River, through its many wide-spreading tributaries, 
 takes possession, and gathering the waters of the moun- 
 tains, rushes them through the Blue Ridge eastward 
 to the lower end of the Chesapeake. Then, as we pass 
 Roanoke, the metropolis of the valley of Virginia, with 
 its 30,000 inhabitants, its railroad shops, and its manu- 
 factures, we come to the height of land that marks off 
 the domain of the New River, whose course Batts fol- 
 lowed in his efforts to reach the limits of the mountains. 
 The New River turns its back upon the East, and, 
 cleaving a way through the Alleghanies, rushes down 
 through West Virginia, under the name of Kanawha, 
 to join the Ohio. 
 
 Here, on the heights overlooking the narrow valley 
 of the New, let us pause to take a survey; for now we 
 have reached the divide, the "Backwater Settlements" 
 whence went the Campbells and then* followers, in the 
 days of the Revolution, to join the Tennessee men for 
 the great stroke at King's Mountain. 
 
 Here the Great Trail divided. While the chief divi- 
 sion kept on its course to the southwest, into the valley of 
 the Holston and the Tennessee, two ways branched off, 
 one up, the other down, the waters of the New. To 
 the right lay the northwest trail into western Virginia, 
 the nearest way to the Ohio; and by this way went many 
 emigrants to fill the limestone valleys between the Alle- 
 ghany ridges, and later the thin-soiled, flat tops of those 
 same ridges, while others continued down to the richer 
 bottoms and the hills below. 
 
84 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 On the other hand, to the south ran the trail up to 
 the sources of the New River, in what is now the north- 
 western corner of North Carolina. From there lay the 
 way south among the mountains, or east into the pied- 
 mont along the Yadkin and the Catawba. This was 
 one of the main routes for the settlers of Carolina's 
 hinterland, though another and perhaps a greater stream 
 of immigrants flowed east of the Blue Ridge. 
 
 The New River occupies no unimportant place in 
 the geography of the mountains. It marks the height 
 of land that divides the Great Valley into its northern 
 and its southern parts. And, more than this, it does 
 its will with the mountains. The place where it cuts 
 through the western ranges marks the point where the 
 Alleghanies stop on the north and the Cumberlands 
 begin on the south. Higher up its course, it plays 
 with the eastern mountains v To the north of the New's 
 course, the Blue Ridge is a single chain, with several 
 parallel ridges, but compact. But when it comes to the 
 New River, it straddles that stream, and running south, 
 spreads out into the Carolina Plateau, with the Blue 
 Ridge proper on the east, and the Unakas (the Iron 
 and Smoky Mountains) on the west. 
 
 Thus, where the New River crosses the Great Val- 
 ley, we stand, physically speaking, in the heart of Ap- 
 palachia. It is near the geographical center a little 
 high up and a little to the left, as the heart should be. 
 It marks approximately the meeting place of the four 
 great divisions of the Appalachians. The fertile valley 
 of Virginia, with its mountains, is to the northeast. 
 To the south is the beautiful Carolina Plateau, "the 
 Land of the Sky," with itis charming valleys and hills 
 and its hundred towering peaks, highest of all the east- 
 ern mountains. To the northwest are the Alleghanies 
 and the rough lands of West Virginia and Kentucky, 
 isolated and long forgotten. Separated from them by 
 cross-ridges a little farther to the south, along the 
 State line is the southwestern country of the Ten- 
 
The Heart of Appalachia 85 
 
 nessee Valley and the Cumberland Plateau. Far to 
 the south, with their two feet on the sandy piedmont 
 of Georgia and Alabama, end the Blue Ridge and the 
 Cumberlands. 
 
 From our height of land whence we have taken this 
 rapid glance, let us turn first toward the west and north. 
 Here lie the mountain lands of Kentucky and West 
 Virginia. The real mountain country consists of the 
 Alleghany and the Cumberland ranges. These ranges 
 consist of a plateau of limestone and sandstone foun- 
 dation which has been cut by the forces of nature into 
 long, narrow table-lands with almost unscalable sides. 
 The narrow valleys between these ridges, which hold 
 the greater part of the population, have little commu- 
 nication with one another. It not infrequently happens 
 that the inhabitants of one valley know less of those 
 in the valley but a few miles across the mountain than 
 they know of those scores of miles away down the more 
 level path of their streams. The valleys contain the 
 best land, some of it above limestone formation 
 of excellent quality. The table-lands have generally 
 thin, sandy soils. 
 
 After the Alleghany ridges have been passed, there 
 comes a wide extent of broken, hilly, or even mountain- 
 ous land, almost all of it, however, being of much lower 
 altitude. This covers the greater extent of the mountain 
 country of Kentucky, and at least half that of West 
 Virginia. Heading usually in the Alleghanies, and run- 
 ning through the lower mountains and foothills, are a 
 number of important streams like the Monongahela, 
 the Kanawha, the Big Sandy, the Kentucky, and the 
 Cumberland. Rapids and falls hinder their navigation 
 very far up into the mountains, and while some im- 
 provements have been made upon some of them, the 
 value of their commerce has not warranted great ex- 
 penditures. The most of their navigation within the 
 mountains consists of the rafting of logs by the moun- 
 taineers in the tune of the spring floods. 
 
86 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 These mountains, lying between the great arteries 
 of travel on east and west, have had at least an equal 
 share of isolation with the Cumberlands of Tennessee. 
 The measure of the world's life that has been brought 
 in to them has come almost wholly through the develop- 
 ment of their mineral and forest resources, and in this 
 matter to the present time West Virginia has shared 
 much more fully than Kentucky. In consequence, 
 this broad expanse of mountain country, containing more 
 than a quarter of the mountain population, has furnished 
 the world its chief examples of a stagnant civilization, 
 with all its spectacular features of blood feuds, moon- 
 shining, and ignorance, along with the pleasanter quali- 
 ties of loyalty and free-handed hospitality. 
 
 Retracing our steps to the Virginian valley, we now 
 turn southward into the region of the great mountains. 
 In the north there are but few high mountains, but 
 as we enter at its acute apex the long triangle of the 
 Carolina Plateau, we find the mountains piling up in 
 great masses. It is along the inner chain, the Iron and 
 Smoky Mountains, or in the transverse ranges that 
 connect it with the eastern Blue Ridge, that we find 
 the greatest heights. From the piedmont of North 
 Carolina the Blue Ridge rises abruptly, yet seldom 
 above three thousand feet, and on its western side its 
 top in some places is scarcely above the level of the 
 plateau. But in the ridges that cross and cut this pla- 
 teau are found more than eighty mountains which can 
 claim between five and six thousand feet altitude, be- 
 sides thirty-two that rise above the six-thousand-foot 
 mark. Among these is Mount Mitchell, in the Black 
 Mountains, a little west of the Blue Ridge, which, with 
 its 6,711 feet above sea level, overtops every other 
 mountain east of the Rockies. It is closely followed, 
 however, by many peaks in the Black and the Smoky 
 Mountains, one of which, Clingman's Dome, still dis- 
 putes honors in the opinions of some authorities, with 
 Mitchell. 
 
The Heart of Appalachia 87 
 
 These mountains, like all the eastern Appalachians, 
 have few cliffs or rocky peaks. Their full, rounded 
 outlines swell up from their surrounding valleys like the 
 ancient mountains of Eden. And indeed, the eyes of 
 Adam may have rested upon these mountains some- 
 what in their present form; for we know from the story 
 of their granite framework that they are among the 
 most ancient of earth's hills. As you gaze from some 
 height out upon the billowy ranges, clothed to the top 
 with forest and grasses, or as you wander along its trails 
 and streams among the azaleas and the rhododendrons 
 in spring and early summer, it is not difficult to believe 
 that you stand in a part of earth's prime domain, as un- 
 spoiled as may be by the ravages of the Deluge. "The 
 Land of the Sky" it was named long ago by one of its 
 admirers, and in loveliness of scenery and climate it 
 deserves the name. 
 
 The climate of this "Land of the Sky" may with 
 slight variations fairly represent that of the whole 
 Blue Ridge country, and, with somewhat greater modi- 
 fications, that of the whole mountain land. The sum- 
 mers are cool, and the winters but slightly more severe 
 than those of the lowlands hi the same latitude. For 
 comparison three cities may be taken: Asheville, North 
 Carolina, in the mountains, at an altitude of 2,250 feet; 
 Lynchburg, Virginia, in the piedmont, at an altitude 
 of 685 feet; and Nashville, Tennessee, at an altitude 
 of 405 feet. The average mean temperature for summer 
 is, in Asheville 70.9, hi Lynchburg 77, in Nashville 
 80.4. In winter Asheville stands at 35, Lynchburg 
 at 36, and Nashville at 39.2. The highest tempera- 
 ture ever recorded at Asheville was 92. 
 
 From Asheville we turn down the gorge of the French 
 Broad River into the valley of the Tennessee. From 
 the altitude of the plateau, 2,200 feet, we drop rapidly 
 into the plain, the lowest part of the Appalachian coun- 
 try. At Knoxville we are scarcely a thousand feet 
 above the sea; at Chattanooga, but 668. The fertile 
 
88 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 soil of this valley rivals that of its northern sister, the 
 Shenandoah. Besides the value of its agriculture, the 
 valley has within its hills and mountainsides incalcu- 
 lable wealth in coal and iron deposits, as well as other 
 metals in scantier proportions, all of which are rapidly 
 being more and more fully exploited. Its chief cities 
 are Bristol, Morristown, Knoxville, Cleveland, and 
 Chattanooga. 
 
 Below Chattanooga, at the southern border of the 
 State, the Tennessee River begins its long, sweeping 
 curve through northern Alabama, to turn northward 
 into the Ohio. In this course it cuts a sharp gorge through 
 the Cumberland Plateau, the gorge which in Sevier's 
 time became the haunts of the Chickamaugas. 
 
 Southeast of Chattanooga, the Georgia highlands 
 rise gradually, the Blue Ridge system extending into 
 that State in the last of its southwestern trend. The 
 general depression of the Great Valley continues, how- 
 ever, between the Cumberland systems, through the 
 northwestern corner of Georgia, until it ends in the 
 lowlands of Alabama. That part of the Cumberlands 
 cut off to the south by the Tennessee River forms the 
 two well-known narrow table-lands of Lookout Moun- 
 tain and Sand Mountain, the former running but eighty 
 miles to an abrupt end in northeastern Alabama, the 
 latter continuing farther and gradually shelving down 
 into the piedmont in the region of Birmingham. The 
 same name in the plural, Sand Mountains, is generally 
 used also to cover the irregular lower highlands that 
 stretch westward nearly across the State, below the Ten- 
 nessee. 
 
 Now, facing northward and crossing the Tennessee, 
 we come into the chief portion of the Cumberlands, 
 the wide table-land that stretches from the eastern 
 valley across to the Tennessee in the west. Abrupt and 
 high it is on its eastern face, rising to an average alti- 
 tude of 2,200 feet, but gradually it shelves off to the 
 westward, until its Highland Rim, in the middle part of 
 
The Heart of Appalachia 89 
 
 the State, is but a thousand feet or less above the sea 
 level, and still lower when it reaches the Tennessee. 
 
 The plateau is cut and gullied by many streams 
 into valleys and gorges, and the Cumberland River, 
 sweeping down from Kentucky in the north, narrows 
 its western part into a long tongue that passes south 
 of Nashville westward to the Tennessee. These western 
 highlands, however, with their gradually lessening 
 altitude, are not generally regarded as a part of the moun- 
 tain system, the technical western edge of the Cumber- 
 land Plateau running some sixty miles east of Nashville. 
 
 The Cumberland Plateau, built up largely of sand- 
 stone, though in places with limestone formation, is, 
 generally speaking, of far less value agriculturally than 
 the lands farther east. This fact, more than its topog- 
 raphy, has made it less open to communication with 
 the outside world. While two or three railroads run 
 up its narrow valleys from the south, and one crosses 
 it from east to west, it is, on the whole, far from posses- 
 sing good facilities for transportation. A few flourish- 
 ing towns there are within its bounds, but its greater 
 part is almost as undeveloped as when the "Long Hunt- 
 ers" crossed its wilderness, more than a century ago. 
 
 Still northward bound, we are now to come to one 
 of the most interesting places in the mountain country. 
 Just at the meeting point of the three States, Tennessee, 
 Virginia, and Kentucky, is the famous Cumberland 
 Gap. From the Tennessee Valley we make our way 
 toward it through the valleys of the Clinch and Powell 
 rivers, the ancient path of the Indian, the pioneer, and 
 the soldier. For Cumberland Gap has gathered within 
 its constricting embrace much of the history of two 
 races and untold generations. Its narrow pass, cut 
 through the cliffs that tower up on either side a thou- 
 sand feet, afforded the most direct and the easiest way 
 out of the mountain country into the plains. And this 
 way the forces of war, of adventure, and of civilization 
 turned. 
 
$o The Men of the Mountains 
 
 The Cumberland Ridge at this point is 2,500 feet 
 high, and 1,200 to 1,500 feet above the land about it. 
 The Gap cuts this altitude down to 1,675 feet, but still 
 there is a climb of some hundreds of feet from the east- 
 ern side and more of a descent upon the western. The 
 old road that led over and through the Gap was the de- 
 spair and the curse of the adventurers who dared it in 
 their quest for the land of promise beyond. Rocky, 
 miry, narrow, and gullied, whether it led in or out of 
 the mountains, it typified the barriers of the mountain- 
 eer's best alliance with the world. When over such 
 roads must come the products of an outside civilization, 
 the mountaineer would perforce be content with his own 
 products and his own civilization. He hewed him out his 
 home from the forest; he raised the corn and the meat 
 that supplied his board; he grew the wool and flax that 
 his own spinning-wheel and loom made into the home- 
 spun that covered his meager form. He remembered or 
 he forgot what religion and culture his fathers had brought 
 in, and where the teacher and the circuit-rider failed 
 him, the Scripture, the story, and the ballad of his 
 traditions made spice for the mental food that lay about 
 him in field and forest and hill. Shut in by the moun- 
 tains, he kept the legacy of his fathers in speech and 
 thought and habit; and as the great world outside made 
 to itself wealth of mind and matter, he was left upon 
 his heights the living monument of a by-gone age. Only 
 where, as in the great valleys, the lines of communica- 
 tion were open and wide, there the pulse-beat of the na- 
 tion and the larger world struck rhythmically and full. 
 But up on the mountains, beyond the cliffs of the table- 
 land, behind the rampart of the forbidding hills, there 
 the mountaineer remained "our contemporary ances- 
 tor." 
 
 But today the scene is changing. Cumberland Gap 
 is no longer a solitary wilderness paoS. The railroad 
 pierces it, cities lie on either side of it, the hum and roar 
 and movement of busy industry strike its gray old 
 
The Heart of Appalachia 91 
 
 walls. The stores of wealth the hills contain have called 
 out the forces of industrialism to subdue it. Shafts 
 and tunnels, furnaces and forges and factories have 
 invaded this vestibule of the mountains. Hotels and 
 palaces are taking the place of the log cabin, and with 
 them come the kindergarten and the college. Here 
 where the first explorers threaded their cautious way 
 amidst the forest, and where the later settler built his 
 stockaded and loopholed home, here where so long 
 brooded the stillness of the backwoods and where 
 dreamed the slow-moving thought of a belated people, 
 here has sprung to life at last the dominant, insistent, 
 driving civilization of the twentieth century. 
 
 This is the manifest destiny of the mountain country 
 everywhere, whether for more good or for more evil, 
 let them say who can see. Elements there are in the new 
 civilization that make for good; others there 'are which 
 tend to evil. The forces of religion and of education 
 are at work in the midst of the dominant industrial- 
 ism. Whether the happy ideals of this last century 
 which are the age-old ideals of Christianity shall 
 prevail over the loud business of Mammon, depends 
 upon the devotion and the diligence of those who minister 
 them. Before the inflowing of this new culture the moun- 
 taineers are changing. Some there are who readily as- 
 similate the standards and methods of their teachers, 
 and become merged in the new life. Some, troubled 
 and resentful at the invasion, are retiring into the yet 
 untouched wilderness where they can continue their 
 traditional mode of life. But more there are who re- 
 main under the influence of the new conditions, becom- 
 ing not its masters but its slaves. Poor in goods they 
 were, and poor hi goods they remain. Contented in 
 their station they were, sometimes with a despairing 
 content; but now, seeing a new and more expensive 
 standard of living, they are discontented with a deeper 
 despair. Independent and proud of spirit they were 
 in their single-class society; now, a lower stratum in a 
 
92 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 complex world, they are learning to bow and cringe 
 to the superior power. The break-up of the primitive 
 society of the mountains by the industrial invasion, 
 without a more than equal educational and religious 
 uplift, means nothing but a reduction to the lower terms 
 of a class society. 
 
 The industrial exploitation of a great part of the 
 mountains is inevitable. When it begins, it works with 
 far greater rapidity than the philanthropic forces work; 
 because it is able to command greater capital and it 
 attracts a larger force of agents. It has its psychical as 
 well as its economic value, but it carries with it a menace 
 as well as a promise. 
 
 Yet after all, the new life, wherever it reaches, of- 
 fers to the mountaineer the same choice of selection 
 that the rest of the world have long had. Does he choose, 
 and is he able, he may join the pushing, jostling crowd 
 of money-seekers, and with a shrewdness no whit in- 
 ferior, run a fair race with all the rest. Is he content with 
 meat and drink, and nothing of higher life, he can find 
 the plane of the wage-earner, with a freer spending 
 ability than he ever yet has known. But does he look 
 for a broader vision, a higher life, a deeper power, there 
 too lie at his hand, or near enough to invite effort, the 
 instruments for culture and development. Thank God 
 that the heart of Christianity has not entirely forgot- 
 ten the mountains. The school is being put within the 
 reach of the needy; and though yet inadequate to the 
 great needs, it is reaching forth with one hand to help 
 the aspiring child of the mountains, and with the other 
 stretched for the bounty of Christianity that shall make 
 its aid more effective. 
 
 As we stand in the Gap, and watch, far over the 
 hills, the receding form of a romantic isolation, and 
 nearer at hand, in the valley, the clamoring, pulsing 
 forces of a new era, our eyes stray up the slope until 
 they rest upon the form of a mediator between these 
 old and these new forces. The school has entered the 
 
The Heart of Appalachia 
 
 93 
 
 Gap. 1 It stands between the startled, bewildered moun- 
 tain child and the life that is either to serve him or to 
 crush him. The school is the hope of the mountaineer. 
 Through it he may be adjusted to this more strenuous 
 life that threatens to undo him. By it his strong, sim- 
 ple, enduring powers may be shaped to a service 
 unequaled among America's workmen. With deepest in- 
 terest, then, may we turn to a study of the forces that 
 have been at work for this preparation and direction 
 of the men of the mountains. 
 
 representative of the school at Cumberland Gap is Lincoln 
 Memorial University, founded by Gen. O. O. Howard, and now presided 
 over by Dr. George A. Hubbell. 
 
%mpanl nf tlpe 
 
"ALL around us we behold the sounds of a com- 
 ing educational revival. It is topping our moun- 
 tains with life and glory ; it is spreading a verdure 
 green over the broad plains ; and it is rustling like 
 sweetest music the leaves of the forest. Let it come 
 and let it come quickly." HENRY S. HARTZOG. 
 
VII 
 THE PIONEER SCHOOL 
 
 IF WE should follow Daniel Boone in seeking a way to 
 the Blue-grass through Cumberland Gap, we should 
 trace a trail through the mountains for near a hundred 
 miles northwestward, before ever we should see our de- 
 sire. Then, as .through a narrow gap there shows a 
 promise of the plains, we should climb upon our right 
 the bold, rocky headland of West Pinnacle, and there 
 stand long to gaze out upon the beauty of Kentucky's 
 fairest land. For there stood Daniel Boone when first 
 his eyes rested upon the Blue-grass. So says, at least, 
 the local tradition. 
 
 But today, instead of an untamed wilderness of for- 
 est and meadow, the feeding-grounds of herds of elk 
 and buffalo, with not so much as a log house or even a 
 skin tent to claim sovereignty, today we shall behold 
 a land of homes and pastures and cultivated fields. 
 And just below us, scarcely three miles across the val- 
 ley of Silver Creek, we shall point out with what 
 quickening of the pulse if we be sons of the mountains 
 we shall point out upon a little hill the clustered build- 
 ings of Berea. For Berea is in the van of the help- 
 ers of the mountains: the first discoverer, the earliest 
 advocate, the keenest student, the broadest teacher, of 
 the mountaineer. 
 
 Berea was in the making before the mountaineer 
 7 (97) 
 
98 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 was recognized as a people. The hand-clasp of the 
 highlander and the lowlander had so slowly loosened, 
 from the day of the Revolution to that of the Civil 
 War, that neither well knew they had lost touch. The 
 nation, clamorous in debate, had forgotten the moun- 
 taineer. The North drew a line from east to west, and 
 began to speak of the Solid South. The South, seaboard 
 and inland, if it thought of the mountains at all, thought 
 of them as its back yard, neglected, perhaps, but inalien- 
 able. 
 
 Then the mountains began to awake, and Berea 
 was there to witness the awakening. About the year 
 1846, a young Kentuckian, John G. Fee, began preach- 
 ing in his native State. He did not confine his preach- 
 ing to platitudes: he had a message, and he spoke it 
 in no uncertain terms. Although the son of a slave- 
 owner, he had, through the influence of his grandmother 
 and his later studies, become convinced that slavery 
 was sinful, and he said so, emphatically, insistently, 
 and with courage. His father disinherited him, his 
 church rebuked him, and his fellow-citizens mobbed 
 him; but none of those things moved him. So common 
 was his experience of violence, in which his family some- 
 times suffered with him, that his daughter, then a lit- 
 tle girl, said in later life that they were never disturbed 
 by the dangers: "They were to us like thunder-storms, 
 things to be expected. We supposed everybody had 
 mobs!" 
 
 There was another fighter among Kentucky's anti- 
 slavery men in those days, not a preacher, but a states- 
 man, Cassius M. Clay. Fearless and fiery, he faced his 
 composite audiences with a message for every party. 
 "This," he announced as he stepped upon the platform 
 and held up a bound volume, "this is a copy of the Holy 
 Scriptures, which enjoins us to prove all things and hold 
 fast that which is good. For the benefit of those of 
 you who revere the ordinances of God, I will read from 
 it. And this " lifting another volume "is a copy 
 
The Pioneer School 99 
 
 of the constitution of the commonwealth of Kentucky, 
 which guarantees to every citizen the right of free speech. 
 For those who fear not God, but have respect for the laws 
 of men, I lay it here beside the Scriptures. For those 
 who fear neither God nor man, if there be any such 
 present, I have still another argument." And reach- 
 ing down into his capacious hip pocket, he produced a 
 wicked-looking army revolver, and laying it beside the 
 constitution and the Bible he entered upon his arraign- 
 ment of slavery. 
 
 Of the same stock as the men of the mountains, 
 Clay found his chief supporters, or rather his most 
 solid support, among Kentucky's mountaineers, free- 
 holders and free-soilers, men who owned land, but who 
 neither held nor wished to hold slaves. Clay owned land 
 in Madison County, a border country, part Blue-grass 
 and part mountain. Attracted by Fee's stout-hearted 
 stand, he invited him to come and settle in Madison 
 County, and build up an antislavery church. Fee came, 
 and in 1854 housed his family in a cabin he had built 
 in a thick scrub of blackjack pine, on a ten-acre tract 
 Clay gave him. 
 
 Around him gathered a band of "more noble" 
 spirits, whom he organized into a church and named 
 Berea. They were in the border land, the highlands 
 behind them, the lowlands in front. Now came with 
 increasing frequency those threats and raids and house- 
 burnings and whippings that gave the little Miss Fee 
 her impressions of normal life. The mountain men were 
 largely in sympathy with Fee and his fellows, but the 
 Blue-grass was mostly hostile, and did not hesitate to 
 show it. 
 
 John G. Fee was not content with preaching and 
 writing and printing. Looking to the future, he hoped 
 to see a generation produced that should hate slavery. 
 To this end there must be schools. So he built a school- 
 house, called in teachers from Oberlin College, and in 
 1855 Berea School began. 
 
ioo The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Three years later, Rev. John A. R. Rogers, an 
 Oberlin man, received his inward call to adventurous 
 service and came to Berea. After earnest prayer, Fee 
 and Rogers and their companions decided that God 
 wanted a college established here in the shadow of the 
 mountains; whereupon, "in order to promote the cause 
 of Christ," Berea College was chartered in 1858. 
 
 The questions of the nation were beginning to stir 
 the highlanders. Berea's advent at this door of the moun- 
 tains brought home to these freeman the questions that 
 were threatening to split the nation; and they, in proud 
 memory of Vincennes, King's Mountain, and New Or- 
 leans, of Clark, and Shelby, and "Old Hickory," silently 
 took their stand for a Union one and inseparable. 
 
 These mountain people, so steadily backing the 
 ideals of Berea, attracted the closer attention of Rogers. 
 He perceived that in the mountaineer, a child yet un- 
 weaned from the ideas that came with the birth of the 
 nation, there was a force to be reckoned with, and this 
 he began to tell the nation. His first social studies of 
 the mountaineer were published in the New York In- 
 dependent in 1858. Thus at the very beginning of Be- 
 rea, her mission to the mountains began to take form. 
 
 But upon the heels of this event came John Brown's 
 raid and a succeeding time of trouble for two years, 
 until the Civil War broke out in earnest. In the strife 
 of parties and the surge of armies, Berea was tossed 
 like a ship upon the waves. Driven from home, Fee, 
 Rogers, and others of the Berea company came back 
 again and again. During the time of then- exile they 
 continued to make payments upon their land, confident 
 in the hope of seeing Berea fulfil their vision. Though 
 they made more than one attempt, it was not until the 
 first of the year 1866 that the school could be reopened. 
 
 Then began a period of development, the fruit of 
 heroic effort. Berea was yet in the wilderness, no rail- 
 road within half a hundred miles. Yet in that wilder- 
 ness, with material hewn from the hills or hauled from 
 
The Pioneer School 101 
 
 Lexington and Cincinnati, were erected two three- 
 story buildings that were an aston;ehraent not .only to 
 the mountaineer, but to the stray, visitor from the out- 
 side world. When, a dozen yea*$ 'lateiy the surveyor 
 for the incoming railroad emerged from the wilderness 
 to catch sight of Ladies' Hall upon the oak-crowned 
 hill, he exclaimed, " Great Scott! Whoever put up a 
 building like that in this far-off country must have had 
 faith!' 7 
 
 Though Mr. Rogers retired from the headship of 
 the school upon the accession of President Fairchild in 
 1869, he remained as a professor for many years, and 
 was a trustee, with heart and soul devoted to his work, 
 until his death in 1906. The three patriarchs, Fee, 
 Rogers, and Fairchild, were united in calling to the presi- 
 dency in 1892 the present head of Berea, William 
 Goodell Frost. 
 
 With President Frost's accession began a new life 
 in the school, a new era for the mountaineer. From 
 Oberlin, like his predecessors, he came with a heart 
 prepared to catch the spirit of Berea's founders, and 
 a mind broadened to the great problems involved in 
 bringing the mountains and the world together. To him 
 has been due, more than to any other, the great expan- 
 sion of Berea's work, the deeper insight into the con- 
 ditions of the mountains, the new awakening of the 
 isolated mountaineer, and the response, in some measure, 
 of philanthropists and public men to the silent appeal 
 of Appalachian America. 
 
 President Frost went up into the mountains to 
 learn at first hand what were the conditions that Berea 
 must help. And out of these investigations have come 
 the social studies which have helped to systematize 
 the work among the mountaineers. In "the land of 
 saddle-bags" his horse carried him from cabin to court- 
 house, from river bottom to stony mountain farm, 
 fording streams, climbing cliffs, winding in and up by 
 narrow trails, and being entertained in. homes of every 
 
IO2 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 description up to the second grade. As he went, he 
 questioned with eyss and tongue. 
 
 What were, their resources? The steep slopes and 
 the narrow .bottoms clustered around the log house 
 gave then* scant inventory of corn patch, of cow and hog 
 and sheep, of a few apple-trees and a tangle of wild 
 blackberries. 
 
 Who were their fathers? When they remembered, 
 there came tales of Union soldiers, of earlier volunteers 
 for Buena Vista and New Orleans and Tallapoosa, 
 and dim memories of great-great-grandfathers who fought 
 at Kanawha and King's Mountain, and who with Boone 
 had traced then* earlier line back to North Carolina and 
 Pennsylvania and Old England. 
 
 What were their ambitions? Where ambition rose, 
 mostly in the young and artless, it was to be strong- 
 est of arm, surest of eye, most skilful of hand, most 
 faithful to blood, perchance to become, through shrewd 
 trade and honest skill, the man of property and the 
 recognized leader of clan and country. 
 
 What were their accomplishments? To split a 
 twig at a hundred yards with the rifle-ball, to fashion 
 with ax and knife the needs of then' civilization, from 
 hewn log house to cord-bed and dulcimer, to wring from 
 a niggardly soil the sustenance of life in bread and shoe 
 and linsey-woolsey. 
 
 Not too many were there who felt free to boast of 
 superior "book-larninV The boy he met out "gunnin' 
 for b'ar" rested his rifle pacifically in the hollow of his 
 arm, while his bright eyes searched the face of the ques- 
 tioner. Could he write numbers? 
 
 " Reckon I can write some numbers," was his guarded 
 reply. 
 
 A strip of smooth bark made an examination paper 
 on which Dr. Frost wrote the nine digits, which were 
 promptly called by the young hunter. Then came com- 
 binations, among them the year 1897. 
 
 "I don't guess I can tell that thar." 
 
The Pioneer School 103 
 
 The teacher explained, and then asked, "Do you 
 know what '1897' means?" 
 
 "Hit's the year, haint it?" 
 
 "Yes; but why is the year called 1897? It is 1897 
 years since what?" 
 
 "I never heard tell." 
 
 But he wanted to know; and when he had learned that, 
 there rose other questions in his mind, beginnings of 
 questions broad, deep, uncomprehended, but clamor- 
 ing for settlement. Bear-hunting fell from its pedestal 
 among the mighty things of earth, and the wider knowl- 
 edge, the nobler activity, to which Berea was the gate- 
 way, became the aspiration of the mountain youth. 
 
 These tours of inquiry have developed into the in- 
 stitution of Berea's Extension Service. Today the li- 
 brary and farm demonstration wagons of the college 
 go forth, accompanied by teachers and advanced stu- 
 dents, to carry a gospel of broader living and widening 
 opportunity to the mountaineer. Still farther go the 
 rider on the sure-footed mule, or the more independent 
 pedestrian, peering into the secrets of the mountains 
 as he gives glimpses of the mysteries without. Every 
 summer sends forth these missionaries, delivering lec- 
 tures, lending books, distributing leaflets, exhibiting 
 stereopticon pictures a work that touches five States, 
 helping those who cannot come to school and inspir- 
 ing those who have not yet wanted to come. 
 
 Berea starts with the child. Through its Prepara- 
 tory School it takes the youngest and sets his feet on the 
 path toward higher things. But is it a youth already 
 entered into his twenties who first feels the impulse to 
 go to school, and yet who fears himself too late a be- 
 ginner ever to reach the top? There is waiting for him 
 the Foundation School, in which special help is given 
 those whose years but not whose attainments place them 
 beyond the common grades. And then he may be en- 
 couraged to enter the Vocational School, where the 
 young man is trained for efficiency as farmer, car- 
 
104 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 penter, smith, printer, and the young woman as nurse 
 and home-maker. 
 
 Does he become aroused by this experience to master 
 more, despite his early handicap? Or does he bring his 
 younger brother and sister? Is the spirit of helpfulness 
 aroused in the mountain youth and the determination 
 to become teachers of the broader life to their home com- 
 munities? There is waiting for them the Normal School, 
 with its broad training not only for the schoolroom 
 but for the garden, the farm, and the forest, for cooking, 
 dressmaking, and nursing. And above, for the few whose 
 time and talents permit, is the College. Berea is really 
 a small university adapted to the practical needs of the 
 mountain people. 
 
 At such a school the mountain boy and girl put their 
 fingers on the pulse of the wider world. Not only are 
 they received by teachers, men and women of broad 
 sympathies and deep understanding of their nature, 
 whose help is consciously given toward their right de- 
 velopment; but they also meet students from the low- 
 land South and from the North, of whom Berea has more 
 than a sprinkling. In their society they find the truest 
 index of their relations to the wide world. They touch 
 here, in the higher life, the same forces with which their 
 parents wrestle on the lower plane of industrialism. 
 
 They find the necessity of adjusting themselves in 
 some way to the rush and tension of twentieth-century 
 America. With his earnings from the lumber camp 
 in his jeans, the boy has walked, perhaps, a hundred 
 miles from an interior county down here to "the Set- 
 tlemints," where he gets his first sight of a railway tram, 
 his first view of big buildings, his first impression of a 
 complex society. The girl, side-seated on the mule 
 her "pappy" has given her, has ridden an equal distance, 
 now to turn her beast into the cash that may be con- 
 verted into learning; and with her mountain training 
 of greater self-effacement than her brother, she meets 
 these new conditions with more evident shyness than 
 
The Pioneer School 105 
 
 does he. What a type of the whole life is to them the 
 limited express that rushes with flash and roar past 
 their faces at the station. Alone in their mountains, 
 unhelped, they would gaze from their ox-cart in dull 
 wonderment or resentment at the motor-car that flashes 
 past on the new county road, with its raucous voice 
 and its terrifying haste, to disappear speedily in its 
 cloud of dust. And, with their father, they would shrink 
 from the intrusion and withdraw farther into the silence 
 of their mountains and their souls. 
 
 But here at the school they feel that they can grasp 
 the wand that will open before them and their people 
 then 1 Red Sea. Though inclination and duty keep them 
 to their own people, though they may not seize the 
 chariots of the Pharaoh that so closely pursue them, 
 they may have a mightier power. Through the Al- 
 mighty's furrow in the sea they may march upon dry 
 ground, lighted by a pillar of fire, to a victory that tri- 
 umphs over chariots and armor. Well will it be for the 
 mountain people if in their progress toward Sinai and the 
 Promised Land, there mingle with them but few of 
 the mixed multitude. 
 
 Back into the mountains go the trained man and 
 woman from Berea, and there follow them, slowly but 
 persistently, the evidences of order, enlightenment, and 
 progress. Teachers and home-makers, they are carry- 
 ing with them neatness, knowledge, skill, and patience. 
 The young man develops his father's farm, rebuilds his 
 mother's home, turns the "blab school" finally into a 
 better-housed, truly disciplined, and progressive insti- 
 tution whose power is not to be measured by its size. 
 The young woman makes a home where there was only a 
 house, brings in hygiene of dress and diet and personal 
 habit; and she runs no whit behind the man in the cour- 
 age and energy with which she lifts communities by that 
 mightiest lever, the school. 
 
 The problem in the school is not of the pupils alone: 
 it is of the community. For generations which have 
 
io6 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 received the traditions of the "old field school," its 
 carelessness, its crudity, and its rough and coarse ideals, 
 finding pleasure more in its omissions and irruptions 
 than in its regularities, accustomed to idling and ab- 
 sences and trouncings of the teacher such generations 
 have instilled into the young manhood of the mountains 
 the idea that the school is meant as the butt of horse- 
 play. This spirit must many times be reckoned with 
 by the girl teacher as well as the man teacher. Of the 
 way she meets it, an appreciative old man of the moun- 
 tains testifies: 
 
 "I tell yeou hit teks a moughty resolute gal ter do 
 what that thar gal has done. She got I reckon about 
 the toughest deestric in the county, which is sayin' a 
 good deal. An' then fer a boardin' place well, thar 
 warn't much choice. Thar was one house with one 
 room. But she kep' right on, an' yeou would hev 
 thought she was havin' the finest kind of a time ter look 
 at her. An' then the last day, when they was sayin' 
 their pieces an' sich, some sorry fellers come in thar 
 full o' moonshine, an' shot ther revolvers. I'm a-tellin' 
 ye hit teks a moughty resolute gal." 
 
 The mountaineer and his well-wishers look with af- 
 fection and hope toward that pioneer of the mountain 
 schools, Berea. Others have taken up the work, nobly 
 daring and enduring and succeeding, but there can be 
 none of them that will refuse today the salute of res- 
 pect and love to the living monument planted and 
 shaped by Fee and Rogers, Fairchild and Frost. Its 
 birth half a century ago was in a log cabin, with a score 
 of students; today, with piles of brick and stone it houses 
 seventeen hundred children of the mountains, seeking 
 to fit them to meet the duties of the new age as their 
 fathers nobly met the old. Is there not hope that, as 
 the periods of the Revolution, the expansion, and the 
 Rebellion found the mountaineer meeting the emer- 
 gencies with leaders and following, so the present era, 
 with its more dazzling opportunities and its more subtle 
 
The Pioneer School 107 
 
 dangers, may find in him, if opportunity serve, a bul- 
 wark of the freedom and virtue of America? Says 
 President Frost: 
 
 "The whole case of the mountaineer may be summed 
 up in the story of Abraham Lincoln. His great career 
 hinged upon the fact that his mother had six books. In 
 that circumstance he differed from the other boys of 
 the region. Is it too much to say that but for that ray 
 of light, his great soul would have been strangled in the 
 birth?" 
 
 To such institutions as Berea College the mountains 
 owe a debt. And the mountains are paying it in trained 
 and resolute men and women who are giving their all 
 to the uplift of their fellows who may yet make the 
 backbone of America's liberty. To such institutions 
 as Berea America owes a debt; for they are making to 
 America a bequest more precious than the treasures of the 
 mines, the wealth of the plains, and the commerce of the 
 city marts. And America has but in small part discharged 
 its debt. Some coins have day by day been dropped 
 into the treasury by the rich men, some little equipment, 
 some wider facilities have been added now and again 
 to the tremendous investment due to Appalachia; but 
 still the army of the mountain helpers may say of their 
 work as Berea says: "Berea never can be rich as long 
 as anybody in the mountains is poor!" 
 
VIII 
 
 THE PREMIER OP HOME MISSIONS 
 
 IT IS a fact little known that up to 1830 the greatest 
 strength of the antislavery forces in America lay in 
 the Southern States. The Northeast had shuffled off 
 its soiled garments of slavery, the Northwest had never 
 put them on, and thus they had largely escaped the dis- 
 comfort of mind and the tortures of soul that went 
 with the slavery question. 
 
 But the South was struggling with a conscience. 
 Its rice and cane and cotton fields were teeming with 
 slaves whose labor a wrong-headed philosophy declared 
 profitable. Yet the great majority of Southern white 
 men were not slave-owners. Where there was one who 
 owned slaves, there were perhaps ten who owned none; 1 
 and from among these ten there were many who spoke 
 out against slavery, who demanded its abolition. Of 
 the one hundred twenty antislavery societies in the 
 United States in 1830, eighty were in the South. Of 
 the forty in the North, Pennsylvania claimed twenty 
 and Ohio sixteen. 3 
 
 1 Hart, Slavery and Abolition, pp. 67, 68. Hart states that only one 
 in thirty-three of the population of the South held slaves. As he reckons 
 each of these to be the head of a family, however, he thinks the true 
 proportion of the slave-holding class to the nonslave-holding class was 
 one to four or five. But this seems a very high estimate; for there were 
 many slave-owners with no family, and there were many families in which 
 not only the father but the mother and some of the children owned slaves. 
 One in ten would be a safer estimate. 
 
 1 Adams, The Neglected Period of Antislavery ', p. 154. 
 (108) 
 
The Premier of Home Missions 109 
 
 But in 1830 came Garrison, the firebrand of aboli- 
 tion, declaring slavery to be a sectional sin rather than a 
 national or a class wrong. He and his followers began 
 to array the North against the South. They were men 
 of one idea, of one aim, and they shot straight. Un- 
 fortunately, their single-mindedness took no account 
 of the fact that the main forces of their antislavery 
 army were on the battle-front toward which they were 
 pointing their straight-shooting guns. They took their 
 friends in the rear; the abolition army of the South 
 crumpled up, broke, scattered. Its outposts disappeared 
 from the Gulf States, its strong battle line retreated 
 from North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland. 
 Only in one State of Dixie still thundered the guns of 
 an antislavery force. 
 
 That State was Kentucky. There the mountain 
 statesman, Cassius M. Clay, pressed the demands of the 
 free-soilers for the abolition of slavery. There the Blue- 
 grass preacher, John G. Fee, in the face of terrorism, 
 insult, abuse, and mobbing, held forth from his pulpit 
 the doctrine of liberty. Kentucky was the last contested 
 ground between slavery and freedom before the case 
 was taken from the court of logic to the field of arms. 
 
 And there the battle was bitter. Fee, deserted by 
 his relatives, discountenanced by his church, estranged 
 even from Clay at last by his advocacy of a "higher 
 law" than the Constitution, and finding it impossible 
 to support his work on what his poor Mends of the moun- 
 tains and the border were able to give bim, at last tinned 
 his eyes to the North for help. 
 
 There was little there to encourage him; for the 
 first fruits of Garrison's propaganda had been the arous- 
 ing of the neutral North to a violent opposition. Aboli- 
 tionists Garrisonians and Moderates alike were 
 hated, denounced, and mobbed. Abolition, wblch had 
 been driven from the South and was hard pressed on 
 the border, was also beleaguered in its new Northern 
 stronghold. 
 
no The Men of the Mountains 
 
 But in one quarter Fee found help. Two years be- 
 fore Fee's appeal, there had been organized, hi 1846, 
 at Albany, N. Y., the American Missionary Associa- 
 tion, a body called into existence by the zeal of men 
 who "would sustain missions for the propagation of a pure 
 and free Christianity/' and " institute arrangements for 
 gathering and sustaining churches in heathen lands from 
 which the sins of caste, polygamy, slave-holding, and 
 the like shall be excluded." This organization was a 
 protest against the attitude of other missionary societies 
 then existing which refused to take a definite stand 
 against slavery. The American Missionary Associa- 
 tion at first took over and conducted some foreign mis- 
 sion stations which had been independently established 
 by its supporters, but its "Home Department," which 
 was soon formed to carry on work among the Indians, 
 negroes, and other foreign peoples in American posses- 
 sions, became in time its only work. 
 
 Fee's appeal did not go unheeded, and in the fall of 
 1848 the association sent him its commission, and prom- 
 ised its financial and moral support. This was continued 
 until near the tune of the Civil War. Thus, in that ear- 
 liest work which Fee and his colaborers of Berea Col- 
 lege began for the Kentucky mountaineer, the American 
 Missionary Association had its place and part. 
 
 Its attention thus turned to the mountaineer by Fee's 
 stand before the mountain wall, the association began 
 to seek an alliance with the highlander in other parts. 
 Into the mountains and foothills of North Carolina, 
 whence came in 1857 Helper's clarion challenge to 
 slavery, the association sent Daniel Worth, a man of 
 fearless courage and commanding eloquence, who there 
 played well the part of Fee in Kentucky. Several sta- 
 tions were established in Kentucky and North Caro- 
 lina, destined however, to a short life; for when in 1859, 
 John Brown raided Harper's Ferry, the shudder of fear 
 that shook the South sent all the Association missions, 
 along with Berea,, into exile. This closed for twenty-five 
 
The Premier of Home Missions 1 1 1 
 
 years the work of the American Missionary Association 
 among the mountaineers. Invited by Berea's founder, 
 it had been the first of missionary organizations to turn 
 toward a helping of the mountain people; and though 
 immediately after the Civil War its energies were chiefly 
 absorbed in the great task thrown upon the nation by 
 the needs of the freedmen, it was again among the first 
 to take up work for the mountaineer. 
 
 In 1884, when the stress of the work for the freedman 
 had begun to slacken, and when the mountains had be- 
 gun to open to outside capital their wealth of iron and 
 coal and timber, then also their spiritual treasures be- 
 gan to call again for the developing forces of Christi- 
 anity. An appeal was made to the American Missionary 
 Association to establish schools for the mountaineer, 
 and the association, responding, picked up the work 
 it had been compelled a quarter of a century before to 
 abandon. Williamsburg, Kentucky, a county-seat in 
 the midst of mountains, which had lived its sixty-seven 
 years without a church building and with scarce a school 
 for itself or its county, was selected as the first point 
 of occupancy. Here was erected Williamsburg Academy, 
 the first of ten institutions of higher grade, besides 
 many primary schools, to be established from Kentucky 
 to Georgia as the response of the American Missionary 
 Association to the needs of the mountains. 
 
 Industrial education was a feature of the program 
 of this Association in its first school among the Mendi 
 people in Africa. And the industrial feature has con- 
 tinued to be a part of its work in its schools among 
 the mountaineers as well as among the negroes and other 
 peoples. The nature of this industrial work has been 
 such as the needs of the schools and their communities 
 demanded. It may be a splendid achievement to train 
 a young man as a civil engineer, but if the immediate 
 needs of his home point to the woodpile and the saw- 
 mill, it shows a more profound understanding of peda- 
 gogy to put the ax and the cant-hook into his hands. 
 
ii2 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 The character of the industrial training the Association 
 has provided may be illustrated by an extract from a 
 paper by the principal of Pleasant Hill Academy on 
 the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee: 
 
 "We were fortunate in the first five years of my 
 principalship in having in Pleasant Hill our dear Father 
 Dodge, who had the happy faculty of getting at North- 
 ern pocketbooks, so that many young people were 
 given an opportunity to be in school who would not 
 otherwise have been able to do so. 
 
 "As the young men and young women were given 
 the opportunity to enter school, it was felt that, to make 
 our help wise, we must require tl m to give some equiva- 
 lent for their chances. It was not difficult to provide 
 housework dish-washing, sweeping, cooking, and iron- 
 ing, for girls; and we could use several boys in the heavier 
 work of the boarding department and as janitors, but 
 it was more difficult to provide for still others. 
 
 "The first fall we added sheds to our very small 
 barn, cut considerable wood, and did some repairing. 
 During our first vacation two student young men built 
 a cottage for friends of the principal, and in the follow- 
 ing autumn a storeroom was added to the girls' hall, 
 and a bath-room was fitted up. 
 
 "Father Dodge conceived the plan of buying out 
 an old mill property near at hand and fitting it up with 
 modern machinery. In this he was successful, so we have 
 the mill. Thus we count our mill a great factor in the 
 enlargement of our whole work, as well as the industrial 
 department. Only one man has been employed regu- 
 larly in the mill, the rest of the work being done mainly 
 by the student boys. 
 
 "Through this instrumentality twenty homes have 
 been erected in Pleasant Hill in the last three years, 
 thus affording increasing opportunities for families to 
 avail themselves of the privileges of the school; and 
 besides this, forty or fifty homes have been built, im- 
 proved, or repaired within a radius of twenty miles. 
 
The Premier of the Missions 113 
 
 " Three years ago we were very much crowded for 
 dormitory room for the boys. Dodge Hall was erected, 
 a brick building, three stories in front and four behind, 
 eighty feet long and forty feet wide. Brick would have 
 cost twenty-five dollars a thousand if brought from their 
 place of manufacture, so we called in some of our boys, 
 secured a brick-maker to direct, and soon had 150,000 
 brick ready for use at the cost of five or six dollars per 
 thousand. 
 
 "When it came to laying the brick, the lime would 
 have cost forty cents a bushel, delivered, so we built 
 a lime-kiln on the side of the mountain, about seven miles 
 away, and secured our lime at half that rate. We bought 
 the standing timber at one dollar a thousand, hauled 
 it to the mill much of it with our own academy team 
 and prepared it for the inside work. 
 
 "Our own boys and parents of our girls and boys 
 did nearly all the carpentry work. All the finishing 
 material for stairway, molding, ceiling and flooring 
 was prepared at our mill. We kept down expenses so 
 well that we called on Northern friends for only $2,500, 
 and did not call on the Association treasury for a penny, 
 yet fair Northern judges state that it would cost, com- 
 pleted, $8,000 or $10,000 there. This hall contains 
 rooms for sixty boys, besides rooms for principal, boys' 
 reading-room, guest-room, and basement for shop and 
 woodhouse. 
 
 "Since the erection of Dodge Hall various forms of 
 work have been done. Hundreds of rods of fencing have 
 been built, hundreds of feet of sidewalk, work in black- 
 smithing and wagon repairing, repairing and making of 
 furniture wardrobes, dining-room tables, wash-stands, 
 small tables and book-cases, picture-frames and so forth; 
 ground cleared for cultivation, and last year twelve or 
 fifteen acres cultivated; several tons of hay, as a result, 
 put into the new barn." 
 
 The American Missionary Association was organized 
 as a non-sectarian agency, and for many years received 
 8 
 
H4 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 support from various of the great religious bodies. After 
 the war, however, as these churches developed particu- 
 lar work and organizations within their own constit- 
 uencies, the American Missionary Association was left 
 more and more fully to the care of the Congregational 
 Church, members of which were largely instrumental 
 in its founding; and today this church stands chief spon- 
 sor for the Association. 
 
 The work of the American Missionary Association 
 is not confined to the mountaineers among the white 
 people of the South, but through its schools and mis- 
 sionaries extends into the lowlands. Its highest school 
 for whites is Atlanta Theological Seminary, located in 
 the capital city of 'Georgia. The association is one of 
 the chief agencies, as it was the earliest, at work among 
 both negro and white elements in the South, and while 
 at the present time it is not the largest society operating 
 in these fields, its thin skirmish line is stretched over 
 a wider space, and its outlook is therefore perhaps the 
 more comprehensive. 
 
 The policy of this Association, in distinction from that 
 of many other agencies, has been to diffuse its benefits 
 among the people through many small schools, rather 
 than to concentrate them in a few large centers. Says 
 one of its spokesmen: 
 
 "From the standpoint of financial support this has 
 required courage. Experienced money-raisers testify 
 that they can more easily secure funds for one or two 
 big schools than for many smaller ones. Such is the ten- 
 dency of present-day philanthropy. It likes great show 
 and to settle upon large institutions: to the school that 
 hath shall be given. The American is peculiarly under 
 the spell of bigness. A single one of the larger institu- 
 tions of the Association might well absorb its entire cur- 
 rent income. Such an institution would then be able 
 to dominate the imagination of the public along with 
 the one or two which now monopolize it. 
 
 "In spite of all this the policy of diffusion is the de- 
 
The Premier of Home Missions 115 
 
 liberate choice. The most distinctive American school 
 is the small college, in intimate relations with its com- 
 munity and with a constituency chiefly local. As a 
 type it is more widely useful than a great university ever 
 can be. Not only is the education of the smaller school 
 apt to be sounder and its administration invariably 
 more economic but it remains closer to the people/' 1 
 
 The force of these words, the value of this policy, 
 will be recognized by every one who has been in posi- 
 tion to make a comparative study of the results of the 
 small and the large school, and who remembers, further- 
 more, that God's model of the school is the home, not 
 the monastery. 
 
 Of the position of this Christian missionary body, 
 Dr. A. D. Mayo says: 
 
 "The first, and still the most notable, of the several 
 great missionary associations ... in the Southern 
 States, through schools of every grade and the ordinary 
 methods of mission work employed by the evangelical 
 Protestant churches in the Northern United States, 
 was the American Missionary Association." 
 
 The American Missionary Association is today, in 
 its history as well as its spirit of evangelism and educa- 
 tion, the premier home mission society of America. 
 
 1 Douglass, Christian Reconstruction in the South, pp. 210, 211. 
 
IX 
 REDEEMING THE TIME 
 
 ONCE, in the early days of the nation, the churches 
 of America were roused to a sense of duty to the 
 mountains and the country just beyond. The frontier, 
 so came the report, was sinking in iniquity and godless- 
 ness. Then the Methodists sent in their circuit-riders, 
 the Baptists followed hard upon their heels, and the 
 Presbyterians awoke to a new power among the forget- 
 ful children of their kirk. So came the " Great Revival" 
 of 1800. The West, from being godless, became the 
 wellspring of a new life in America's religion. 
 
 But then, the deed done, the gift bestowed, the 
 church forgot the mountain people, and left them to 
 themselves. The momentum of the " Great Revival " 
 carried them far. It reopened and made to flow freely 
 the springs of reverence which had become choked with 
 worldliness and ignorance. And even today the rough 
 clearing of that great movement shows its traces in the 
 religion of the mountains. 
 
 But that was not sufficient. That did not end the 
 mission of the church. Elsewhere the spiritual and the 
 mental life have been developed, shaped, polished, by 
 contact with the world's life current. But here in the 
 mountains, without schools, without broad intercourse, 
 it swirled in its little eddy, stationary, and ever more 
 faint. For more than three quarters of a century the 
 (116) 
 
Redeeming the Time 117 
 
 church forgot the mountaineer, and the nation remem- 
 bered him only to require service, not to give it. The 
 mountaineer had entered his lot abreast of the world. 
 It was at a time when the railroad was yet unknown, 
 the printing press a luxury, the school a costly privilege. 
 Without the railroad or canals or good roads, there was 
 little trade, little travel. Without the newspaper, with 
 practically no books, there was little exchange of thought 
 or community of purpose. Without schools, with read- 
 ing and writing the distinction of the great, there could 
 be no progress. Thus the mountaineer became a fixed 
 type, the type of that pioneer life of his beginnings. 
 
 And that was at a time when the world was just 
 beginning that marvelous leaping march which has 
 crowded the progress of a thousand centuries into one. 
 Who could foretell, when the mountains wove their 
 people into their chrysalis, what ink and steam and 
 electricity were about to do to the world? or how far 
 behind its advance w r as to leave those who were made 
 to stand still? Busied with their own race, the world 
 and the church forgot the sleeper in the hills. 
 
 When, therefore, after eighty years of neglect, the 
 church felt the tug of the mountaineer upon her skirts, 
 and turned to reach a helping hand, she found that a 
 mighty pull was needed to bring him to her side. There 
 was more than a century of time to redeem. 
 
 The religious movement of the early nineteenth 
 century left the mountain church Baptist and Metho- 
 dist, more largely Baptist. 1 What was more natural than 
 that these churches should regard the field as occupied 
 and competent to meet its own needs? The detached 
 congregational system of the Baptists made local re- 
 sponsibility the greater, while by the split in the Metho- 
 
 1 Baptists in the mountains make forty-eight per cent of the total 
 church-membership. Thirty-one per cent are Methodists, six per cent 
 Presbyterians, and five per cent Disciples. Episcopalians have about 
 seven-tenths of one per cent, mostly in the' towns. Roman Catholics 
 are practically unknown, except among the foreign populations of the 
 mining districts and in the few cities. 
 
n8 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 dist Church over slavery, the mountain churches 
 spiritual kin to the North but living in the South 
 were left orphans. 
 
 Among themselves, the Baptists and Methodists of 
 the mountains did provide such facilities for education 
 as their resources permitted, and a considerable number 
 of academies, seminaries, and colleges attest their zeal 
 for education. Yet these have touched but a small 
 proportion of even their ministers, the class for which 
 they are specially designed. The Northern branches 
 of these two churches have left the problem of the 
 mountains to the Southern divisions, and these have in 
 comparatively recent times taken up the work of reen- 
 forcement of their forces in the mountains. 
 
 In 1898 the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board 
 turned its attention to the development of the mountain 
 people by assisting in the establishment and support 
 of mission schools. In six mountain States they now 
 have thirty-three schools of academic grade and one 
 college, in which are five thousand youth under train- 
 ing. Several of these schools are located upon small 
 farms, and the board is encouraging the beginning of 
 industrial education. 
 
 Work among the mountaineers on the part of Southern 
 Methodists, under charge of the Home Department of 
 the Woman's Missionary Council, was inaugurated in 
 1897, as the result of one woman's determination to 
 " illumine some dark corner." Miss Bennett's longing 
 to see a permanent educational work established in the 
 Kentucky mountains was not gratified before her early 
 death, but today the Sue Bennett Memorial School at 
 London, Kentucky, with an enrolment of over three 
 hundred students, is the monument to her devotion. 
 The Home Department has one other school, Brevard 
 Institute, in the beautiful upper valley of the French 
 Broad in North Carolina; and the department stands 
 behind the movement, now gaining momentum among 
 Southern Methodists, to widen the opportunities and 
 
Redeeming the Time 119 
 
 develop the talents of their mountain constituency. 
 
 Over hi Virginia, the patrimony of the Episcopal 
 Church, there had never been anything done for the 
 Blue Ridge mountaineers. "If it be asked," says one 
 of its spokesmen, "why have these mountaineers been 
 neglected and allowed to sink to the low level on which 
 we find them today, when the church has been at work 
 hi Virginia for so long a tune? the answer is, that 
 after the Revolutionary War, the church was at such a 
 low ebb that its life was nearly extinguished. After 
 its revival under Bishop Meade, the Civil War came on, 
 which swept away the wealth and property of the church- 
 men, and from this impoverished condition they have 
 only lately begun to recover. In addition to this it must 
 be remembered that the church in Virginia has inherited 
 a large number of country parishes from old colonial 
 times, and the great problem for many years has been 
 how to keep these parishes going, and the churches open." 
 
 But the time of action had come. The church sent 
 a young worker, Archdeacon Neve, to a parish that 
 touched the Blue Ridge. In his visits among the people, 
 he soon came into touch with some of the backward 
 communities who had no church, no school, no wide 
 view nor high ideals of life. His sympathies were aroused. 
 He drew first his parishioners, and then others, into his 
 work of uplift. 
 
 It was not exactly a sympathetic subject that re- 
 ceived their first ministrations. A friendly visit in the 
 log home, a prayer, a sermon these were very well 
 and quite proper, no doubt, as the work of a church- 
 man; and here and there a soul hungering for spiritual 
 food broke through the barriers to respond to the advances 
 of the minister. But any step beyond the narrow limits 
 of the Episcopal service was met with suspicion. Was 
 land wanted on which to establish a mission? the owner 
 suspected the presence of undiscovered mineral wealth, 
 and refused to sell. Was a school proposed? the ob- 
 ject (echoes of 1812!) was to get hold of children, to 
 
120 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 ship them over to England, and put them into the 
 British army. Was a building at last hi process of erec- 
 tion? it was a railroad station to serve the yet un- 
 discovered designs of the "furriners." 
 
 Such an attitude could be met only by patient living 
 and ministry. A party of young students one summer 
 camped out on top of the Blue Ridge, and anxious to 
 do some good while there, they visited the homes of the 
 people about and read to them from the Bible. Among 
 a class many of whom had never heard a sermon nor 
 Scripture reading, they found some who were delighted 
 at this service, and they were begged to stay there with 
 them always. They could do no less than promise to 
 come back or send some one in their place. 
 
 The first step was to find a Christian teacher who 
 should make her home hi such a neglected community, 
 and through visiting, nursing, and teaching carry a con- 
 crete gospel to the needy. This first movement was 
 developed into a large day school, with two or three 
 teachers. Then a workers' home was proposed, for 
 the sake both of better preserving the health and strength 
 of the workers and of making a model for better homes 
 and home life. This Workers' Home has proved a model 
 for others, from out of which go forth Bible readers, 
 evangelists, nurses, and teachers, who are helping to 
 raise the standard of living hi every practical way. 
 
 The Episcopal Church has three special missions: 
 this, the Blue Ridge Archdeaconry in Virginia, another 
 in Kentucky, and a third hi the foothills of North Caro- 
 lina. In the Blue Ridge Mission are four homes for 
 workers, each of which is the center for several schools. 
 On the other side of the mountains, hi Kentucky, Arch- 
 deacon Wentworth is in charge of seven missions and 
 twenty-six mission stations hi the mountain districts, 
 besides eight missions and twenty-two mission stations 
 in the foothills. There are two schools, one at Beatty- 
 ville and the other, St. John's Collegiate Institute, at 
 Corbin; but with or without school buildings the whole 
 
Redeeming the Time 121 
 
 work is educational, in how great and varied degrees 
 an extract from one narrative will partially show: 
 
 "Everywhere, in each department, we find more 
 response than we hoped for. We were warned that the 
 children would not care for reading, but nowhere have 
 I seen more appreciative audiences to stories read or 
 told. Friends were kind to us this year in sending some 
 books and many magazines, and the children were 
 delighted with our well-stored book press in the kin- 
 dergarten rooms. The magazines we carried to the 
 outlying points were seized upon with shy eagerness. 
 'The best book a man ever read/ said one old man to 
 me, 'is this here Areny, and next to hit is the Reeview 
 of Reeviews.' As for our Proctor children, they spent 
 happy hours in the grassy yard while one of us read 
 aloud stories from St. Nicholas. The boys giggled glee- 
 fully over 'We Boys 7 at League meetings. On the 
 singing evenings we read aloud to quiet but interested 
 and responsive audiences of children and grown people, 
 'Rab and His Friends/ 'Patience and Experience/ and 
 other stories of high literary quality. 
 
 "Before we went up this year, Mr. Barnes and Dr. 
 Wood sent us a well-stored medicine chest, with 
 salves and ointments, lotions for burns and bruises, 
 talcum powder and castile soap. It would have repaid 
 these friends, as it a thousand-fold repaid the labors 
 of an amateur nurse with more good will than knowl- 
 edge, to see the comfort this simple outfit brought to 
 tormented babies, and cut and bruised small boys and 
 fever patients, to whom talcum powder was a new 
 luxury. Miss Mahan wrote a month later: 'It would do 
 you good to see the bare brown legs I am watching in 
 the school yard, with never a sore or a scar hi sight/ 
 For the last week of our stay Miss Cook was with us 
 and taught a cutting and fitting class, heroically finding 
 time and strength for a course of ten lessons in that short 
 time, and winning the lasting gratitude of mothers, 
 whose problem is to make one yard do the work of two, 
 
122 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 and whose want of training often wastes the one. . . . 
 
 "On this evening Mrs. Scott sang for us, and next 
 day, early hi the afternoon, dear old Uncle Frank Dough- 
 erty came by, and, sitting on the step, he said: 'Hag 
 and the girls tell me there's a lady here that sings to beat 
 all the sweetness a body ever heard/ And so Mrs. 
 Scott, undiscouraged by the kindergarten piano, sang 
 some of the ballads he loved, and the tears rained down 
 the old man's cheeks. 'I'm that kind of an old fool/ 
 he said. 'But, faith, ef she'd kape it up forever, I'd 
 niver want to see hiven!' And then the old Irishman 
 added: Tor the mather o' that, I'd 'as lief stay here 
 onyway I'm acquainted here, ye knaw.' That morn- 
 ing, in the blazing sun, Miss Couchman rode off with 
 Mr. Patterson to help a family above Duck Fork o'Stur- 
 geon, where were five cases of typhoid fever hi a one- 
 room windowless cabin, and where a ten-year-old girl 
 lay dead. We sent some flowers and white ribbon, 
 and Miss Couchman helped dress the little maid. When 
 we were there a year ago we had grieved over a doll 
 tied up on the wall too good to play with. Miss 
 Couchman tells us they put it into the little mother's 
 arms at last when she was asleep. . . . 
 
 "I have no time to tell you of the mothers' meeting, 
 nor of the League's work, nor even of the final erection 
 of the Page fence, to which the kindergarten babies 
 begged to sing 'Good Morning,' to the great joy of the 
 League adviser; nor of the League's good use of the 
 set of tools sent them by Smith, Watkins, and Company; 
 nor of the delightful 'play party' at the home of the four- 
 teen-year-old girl of whom I told you ; nor of all the kind- 
 ness shown us by the people; of invitations to their 
 homes, a few of which we made tune to accept; of the 
 boat which Mr. Martin loaned us, and Mr. Bailey's 
 promise to help the carpentry class make us a boat of 
 our own next year; of all the help and courtesy that 
 came from 'yan side of the river.' . . . 
 
 "Uncle Ben Bigstaff visited us this year. The old 
 
Redeeming the Time 123 
 
 man is broken in body, having spent himself in his 
 Master's service here in the Kentucky mountains. But 
 he fairly beamed upon it all. 'This is the very thing I 
 have prayed for and waited all my life to see/ he said. 
 'It is like the leaven that a woman took and hid in three 
 measures of meal until the whole was leavened. Work 
 like this, I tell you, just means salvation to the Kentucky 
 mountains/ But Uncle Ben knows and remembers 
 always what we Blue-grass people seem often to forget 
 that if the leaven is good, so, also, is the meal." 
 
 The Morganton Associate Missions are in North 
 Carolina, in the foothills more than in the mountains. 
 They consist of eight missions, six of them having day 
 schools, which enroll 354 children. As elsewhere, how- 
 ever, the schools are only one feature of the mission 
 work, the house-to-house missionary going into some 
 of the most distant and difficult sections to bring the 
 light of the gospel to those who hear it in no other way. 
 
 The Episcopal Church has, besides, inaugurated a 
 work for the cotton mill operatives in North and South 
 Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, at over thirty dif- 
 ferent mills. Most of this work consists of Sunday 
 schools and church service, though in several cases a 
 more or less extensive institutional work is done, in- 
 cluding night school, men's and women's clubs, indus- 
 trial classes, libraries, gymnasiums, medical service, 
 and lectures. The cotton mills are mostly in the pied- 
 mont, and their operatives come largely from the 
 mountains. The work of the church, especially in its 
 educational and economic features, is generally wel- 
 comed and seconded by the mill owners. 
 
 In North Carolina is the center of the work conducted 
 by the Northern Presbyterians through their Woman's 
 Board of Home Missions. The Presbyterians were the 
 first to begin special work for the mountaineer, not 
 counting the abortive work of the American Missionary 
 Association before the war. In 1879 they established 
 their first mission school, in Concord, N. C. About the 
 
124 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 same time Rev. L. M. Pease, a Presbyterian clergyman 
 in ill health, went with his wife to Asheville, even then 
 famous as a health resort. Mr. and Mrs. Pease were 
 soon interested in the children and young people about 
 them, whose school advantages were of the slightest; 
 they opened a free day school, for which they enlisted 
 the support of their church. 
 
 This beginning in Asheville was the origin of the 
 Presbyterian mission school work, and of the three 
 great schools now at that place, which make the center 
 of the system: viz., the Home Industrial School (for 
 girls) and the Normal and Collegiate Institute, in the 
 outskirts of the city, and the Farm School (for boys), 
 nine miles up the Swannanoa River. 
 
 The Home Industrial School was opened in 1887, 
 to be followed in 1893-94 by the founding of the boys' 
 Farm School and the Normal and Collegiate Institute. 
 The latter is the cap-stone to the Presbyterian school 
 system, being chiefly concerned in preparing teachers 
 to fill the great needs of the mountains. No schools 
 are in greater esteem among the mountain people than 
 these; and while then* influence is felt far and wide 
 through the mountains, it is especially evident in that 
 "Land of the Sky" in the midst of which they are situ- 
 ated. 
 
 To these higher schools are related more than fifty 
 academies and boarding schools, scattered through 
 West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Caro- 
 lina. There are, besides, a number of mission stations 
 served by "Bible readers/ ' who establish in their little 
 cottages homes that become models to their communi- 
 ties. They visit the sick, conduct mothers' meetings 
 and sewing-circles, Sunday-schools and prayer-meet- 
 ings, and do a work that tells for more than that of the 
 school bounded by four walls. 
 
 These schools and missions are doing not a little 
 to develop the native handicrafts. A visit to the depot 
 of the Allanstand Industries, in Asheville, where the 
 
Redeeming the Time 125 
 
 products of one of their lines of stations are marketed, 
 gives a glimpse into the industries of these mountain 
 people reminiscent of the work of our great-grandfathers. 
 Baskets of cane and hickory splits, whitewood, oak, 
 and willow, in unique and original designs; rugs and 
 coverlets in the colors of the soft wood dyes, and often- 
 times in beautiful patterns; and hand-made furniture 
 that defies the assaults of time; these are among the 
 arts that add an important and genuine note to the 
 popular movement in arts and crafts. They are the pro- 
 duct of a people who make them from no dilettante in- 
 terest in art, but to supply their own needs first, and 
 then to reach the general public with the surplus. 
 
 "The Presbyterian Church," says Dr. Wilson, "has 
 reached a practical consensus of opinion as to what 
 is its chief mission in the Southern mountains. That 
 mission is to educate, to provide Christian education 
 for the young. This is, of course, recognized as an 
 exceptional case. 
 
 "Usually the church looks upon itself as an evan- 
 gelizing agency. But in the Appalachians it recognizes 
 the fact that here the most successful way to contribute 
 to the coming of the glad day when the mountains will 
 be fully evangelized is to educate the young people of 
 the mountains. What hope of building up good Pres- 
 byterianism or good Christianity of any type if the 
 majority of the people cannot read, or search the Scrip- 
 tures that testify of Christ? What hope of founding a 
 substantial work so long as no educated leaders exist 
 with desire for improvement and progress? It is evi- 
 dent that the Appalachian worker must lay broad and 
 deep the foundation of education and intelligence 
 before he can erect a permanent Christian church that 
 shall largely improve the people for whose good it is 
 consecrated." 
 
 A work of great value and interest is that of the 
 America Inland Mission, or Society of Soul Winners, 
 
 1 Samuel T. Wilson, The Southern Mountaineers, p. 103. 
 
126 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 with headquarters at Wilmore, Ky. This society was 
 founded over a quarter century ago by Rev. Edward 
 O. Guerrant, who compresses his forty years' experi- 
 ence in the mountains into these few words: 
 
 "When a young man, I went to Virginia, the land 
 of my fathers, to join the army, and rode more than a 
 hundred miles across the Cumberland Mountains. Al- 
 though not looking for churches or preachers, I do not 
 remember seeing a single one. During the war I crossed 
 those mountains several times, and still found no churches. 
 I was surprised. 
 
 "After the war I became a physician, and frequently 
 rode through those mountains, visiting the sick, and 
 still found only a church or two hi many miles, though 
 there were thousands of people with souls. 
 
 "When I became a minister, I naturally remembered 
 that country where many of my old comrades lived, 
 Christless and churchless, and determined to give them 
 what little help I could." 
 
 This "little help" given by the Society of Soul Win- 
 ners, means this and more : 
 
 "In ten years 362 missionaries have labored exclu- 
 sively in these wild mountains. They made 51,000 
 visits, held over 22,000 public services at 10,069 places, 
 had 6,304 conversions, taught 879 Bible Schools with 
 39,456 pupils, distributed over 250 boxes and barrels 
 of clothing to the poor, over 10,000 Bibles and Testa- 
 ments, and 125,000 tracts, built 56 churches, schools, and 
 mission houses, including three colleges and an orphan 
 asylum." 
 
 Dr. Guerrant, seemingly as active in the saddle as 
 when, fifty years ago, he rode with Morgan's resist- 
 less cavalry, now leads his hundred evangelists in tire- 
 less journeys over the mountains and through glens 
 and coves from Kentucky to North Carolina. His 
 "Galax Gatherers" 1 is a collection into a book of two 
 
 1 The Galax Gatherers; the Gospel among the Highlanders. Price 
 $1.00. Published by Edward O. Guerrant, Wilmore, Kentucky. 
 
Redeeming the Time 127 
 
 hundred pages of stirring messages rough-hewn hi the 
 field; stories of great heights and solemn gorges; heroic 
 girl teachers in the far interior; highland weddings 
 and cabin prayer-meetings; accounts of Yancey apple 
 caravans and tales of Cataloochee hospitality where 
 "contented poverty lives happily with Jesus;" and 
 preaching services that register audiences of from three 
 little children to mammoth mountain gatherings of three 
 hundred out hi the " first church" which God built 
 a book that carries the reader hi a rush of Christian 
 militancy from " Troublesome River hi the darkest 
 Cumber lands" to the Estatoa missions under the shadow 
 of mighty Mount Mitchell; fighting the Mormons hi 
 Kentucky; conducting a Congregational service with the 
 shouts of Methodist people; closing the saloons with 
 the power of a single sermon; baptizing a score at Pun- 
 cheon Camp and establishing schools hi "Bloody Breath- 
 itt" a book to take the Christian reader by storm, 
 with its vigorous narrative, beautiful descriptions, and 
 flashes of unexpected humor. 
 
 When he had made up his mind to devote himself 
 to the mountain people, Dr. Guerrant, a Southern 
 Presbyterian, turned to his church synod in Kentucky, 
 and induced them to send him as an evangelist into 
 the mountains. But soon the church found the work 
 developing too fast, so it thought, for its resources, and 
 asked their missionary not to build so many churches and 
 establish so many schools that they could not keep up 
 with the expenses. Then Dr. Guerrant stood up be- 
 fore his synod and said: "Brethren, if you cannot afford 
 to pay for the schools and the missionaries for the poor 
 highlanders, God can pay for them." And he went out to 
 organize the America Inland Mission, for which he made a 
 general appeal ; and "for fourteen years God has supported 
 this mission, which has employed hundreds of workers 
 and cost tens of thousands of dollars, with no depend- 
 ence but prayer. In every land he has raised up friends 
 whose voluntary gifts have supported the work." 
 
128 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 The Southern Presbyterian 'Church finally took 
 back the developed work under the care of its home mis- 
 sion board, but it is still conducted as a separate depart- 
 ment, and "is auxiliary to all denominational work, 
 and seeks only the further extension of Christ's king- 
 dom." It has one hundred three evangelists, for whom 
 are chosen as fields the most destitute mountain regions 
 of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. 
 It has seventeen day schools, with seven hundred pu- 
 pils, and four higher schools in Kentucky and North 
 Carolina. Its Orphans' Home hi Clay City, Kentucky, 
 is one of its earliest enterprises. This home is ideally 
 situated on a thirty-acre farm, where the children are 
 given an industrial and liberal education. The prop- 
 erty of the society its schools, mission houses, and 
 churches is valued at $50,000. 
 
 But beyond computation is the value of its most 
 precious property, the men and women who are con- 
 ducting the work at almost less than living wage; as, 
 for instance, the two young men, graduates of a tech- 
 nological school, who left positions at four dollars a day 
 to build with their own hands and to manage the new 
 Beechwood Seminary, at a salary of twenty-five dol- 
 lars a month. So, too, beyond known value, are the 
 thousands of souls that this dauntless band of mis- 
 sionaries are searching out and teaching and inspiring 
 in the mountains. 
 
 Thus have we caught a glimpse of the educational 
 and social work of the churches in the Southern moun- 
 tains. No adequate presentation is possible or intended 
 in this short review. It has only been hoped to indicate, 
 by a bit of history, a bit of statistics, and a bit of inci- 
 dent, the extent and character of the Christian agencies 
 now engaged in an effort to redeem the lost tune of the 
 past century. The field is as yet a virgin field, wide 
 open for workers who are willing to give up some of the 
 luxuries of the age in exchange for the joy of present 
 service and the rewarding glories of an age to come. 
 
o 
 
 .2 3 
 
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 3 1 
 
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X 
 COALS FROM THE ALTAR 
 
 ONCE, long ago, a seer saw a vision of the Lord 
 God Almighty, high and lifted up on his living 
 throne. About him were his seraphim, and they sang 
 one to another, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: 
 the whole earth is full of his glory." 
 
 It did not seem to the prophet, cowering there, that 
 the earth was filled with God's glory. Best of earth's 
 blood were his people, the children of a " Prince with 
 God"; yet they little revealed the glory of God. Proud, 
 fierce, ignorant, they darkened the land with their crimes 
 and shamed it with their brutishness. He himself, 
 who should have been a teacher so ran his self-accusa- 
 tion had been blind to his people's needs and in- 
 excusably selfish. So he cried, "Woe is me! for I am 
 undone; b'ecause I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
 dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine 
 eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." 
 
 Then flew one of the seraphim to him, with a live 
 coal in his hand, taken from off the altar. He laid it 
 upon his mouth, and said, "Lo, this hath touched thy 
 lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin 
 purged." 
 
 Immediately came the voice of God, saying, "Whom 
 shall I send? and who will go for us?" Then the seer, 
 fired with zeal and power by that coal from the altar, 
 9 (129) 
 
130 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 and seeing as the seraphim a vision of a new earth filled 
 with the glory of God, said: "Here am I; send me." 
 So was born the prophet of the Messiah. 
 
 Here, now, is a story of two, a woman and a man, 
 called of God to spread the glory of his presence in the 
 hearts and the homes of another chosen people. Widely 
 separated were these two, in place, in fortune, in sta- 
 tion; yet so similar in purpose and resolution that then- 
 common mission shows a common origin: the vision 
 of God's glory and the kindling of their zeal by that coal 
 from off his altar. The one was the daughter of a south- 
 ern aristocrat, with the heritage of culture and wealth; 
 the other was the son of a mountain preacher, with no 
 legacy but an abounding faith. But they were alike, 
 when each had seen his vision, in crying, "Here am I; 
 send me." In what they have seen, and sought, and 
 done for the mountaineer, they may stand as repre- 
 sentatives of the forces from within the mountains that 
 are being divinely aroused to teach and lead their peo- 
 ple. 
 
 Down in the hills of northern Georgia, just where 
 the Blue Ridge and the Cumberlands halt their inva- 
 sion of the plains, lies the thriving little city of Rome. 
 Two miles north, on a green-swarded, shady hill, is the 
 proud old ancestral home of the Berrys. The big oak 
 grove that surrounds it serves scarcely to hide, down in 
 one corner, a little, low, mud-daubed log cabin, with a 
 stick chimney wide enough to swallow any Saint Nicho- 
 las. And many a time it did swallow one of the little 
 Berrys who had forgotten the key to the door of their 
 play-house, where candy-pulls and corn-poppings and 
 chestnut-roastings marked many a holiday. 
 
 The children of the Berry household grew up in time; 
 but for one of them the little cabin held all too hallowed 
 memories to permit its being neglected or forgotten. 
 Martha Berry chose it for her "den," and with coon 
 skins and bear skins and plunder of field and wood she 
 made it a lodge to match the legend over the fireplace, 
 
Coals from the Altar 131 
 
 "Kyndle Friendship. " The rafters above were hidden 
 behind festoons of peppers and popcorn ears, and out- 
 side, by the door, hung the cedar water-pail alongside 
 the gourd dipper. Over in one corner was a little old 
 rosewood melodeon, infirm in its legs, and with its keys 
 yellow from age. Here Martha Berry spent many and 
 many a quiet hour with her 'books and the wild things 
 of the woods that visited her. 
 
 One balmy Sunday afternoon in April three other 
 little wild things crept up to the cabin, and through some 
 unchinked cracks stood peering in at this wondrous 
 palace of beauty and the lady that lived therein. Miss 
 Berry, suddenly conscious of the scrutiny, looked up 
 from her book to encounter the three pairs of gray-blue 
 eyes so wonderingly intent upon her paradise. 
 
 "Come in," she called to them. But the three 
 little barefoot, ragged children shrank away in fear. 
 Going to the door, Miss Berry tried to talk with them, 
 but it was only when she held out the temptation of 
 bright-cheeked apples that she could persuade them to 
 cross the threshold. Then, remembering it was Sunday, 
 she began to tell them Bible stories. These were all 
 new to them, as she discovered when she asked them 
 questions. 
 
 "Don't know," they said, "don't know. Hain't 
 never been to no Sunday school. We-uns' Hardshells." 
 
 Did they have any brothers and sisters? she asked. 
 Yes, indeed. "I got about eight," said one; and another, 
 "I got about ten." 
 
 They were the children of tenant farmers near-by, 
 men from the mountains or of kin to them. If Miss 
 Berry like Joseph was seeking to prove these spies 
 as to their families, the proof was forthcoming. She 
 asked them to return next Sunday and bring their 
 brothers and sisters. Then promptly with their depart- 
 ture, her other interests took back her mind, until she 
 had nearly forgotten her promise. The next Sunday 
 she was sitting with some visitors from the city upon 
 
132 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 the gallery of the "big house," when through the woods 
 she saw a procession that recalled her appointment. 
 Not only children were coming, but men, women, babies, 
 and dogs. Excusing herself from her friends, she hur- 
 ried down to meet the Sunday school delegation at 
 the little log cabin. 
 
 Forming an impromptu program in her mind, she 
 said, "First we'll sing something." The wheezy little 
 melodeon, upheld on all sides by eager children, did 
 its best, a wondrous best, as they sang to Miss Berry's 
 "lining out," "I'm so glad that Jesus loves me." And 
 then she told them Bible stories, stories so new and fresh 
 to these neglected "Hardshells" that not the children 
 only, but the fathers and mothers, sat with rapt faces, 
 while the babies kept silence, and not even a dog moved 
 his tongue. For this Sunday school, mark you, was 
 the laying of the corner-stone of a great temple of 
 service. 
 
 Every succeeding Sunday brought more and more 
 and more visitors, some with gifts of shuck mats for 
 seats for the growing audience, which promptly filled 
 the cabin and overflowed into the grove. Miss Berry 
 had become, before she knew it, the head and front of 
 a weekly camp-meeting, an affair that promised an 
 undefined extension. How many a lady, with such a 
 distinction thrust upon her, would not gracefully have 
 withdrawn on about the seventh Sunday? How many 
 would not have found the hot summer good reason to 
 terminate an enterprise that threatened leisure and for- 
 bade society? But not so Martha Berry. A Voice had 
 called, "Whom shall I send? and who will go for us?" 
 And out of her leisurely, sheltered life she came to re- 
 spond, "Here am I; send me." And then a new glory 
 came upon life, the glory of a revealed Christ. 
 
 The Sunday school grew. People would come, rain 
 or shine; and soon, impelled by necessity, Miss Berry 
 invested one hundred dollars in lumber, and the men 
 and boys of the Sunday school put up a small school- 
 
Coals from the Altar 133 
 
 house, which soon added to itself a little room on the 
 front, then a big room on the back. 
 
 Then the Sunday school grew into a circuit. Some 
 of the members moved up to Possum Trot Creek, and 
 they sent word for Miss Berry to come there and open 
 a Sunday school. So she drove the eight miles to Possum 
 Trot, and held Sunday school with them in an old, 
 dilapidated house that had survived the war. One 
 Sunday it rained, and though the superintendent fled 
 from corner to corner, she was soaked before the Sunday 
 school and the shower were over. So she asked the peo- 
 ple to put on a new roof before the next Sunday. But 
 that seemed to them a most unreasonable request. 
 
 "It mought not rain for a whole month," said one man. 
 
 "Yes," replied Miss Berry, "but it mought rain next 
 Sunday." 
 
 She pointed to an oak tree near-by which would make 
 good "boards," and told the men that if they would 
 cut it up and shingle the roof she would bring the nails, 
 and treat the workers to lemonade. They came, and she 
 came, and, most indispensable of all, the lemonade came, 
 a most unaccustomed beverage, but one highly appre- 
 ciated by all, even by the old man who remarked with 
 an amused chuckle that he "never heard of a woman 
 a-bossin' of a house-roofin' before." 
 
 From Possum Trot "the Sunday Lady," as the 
 countryside began affectionately to call her, was soon 
 extending her chain of Sunday schools in several direc- 
 tions. Her sister and others were enlisted as helpers. 
 And soon mightily grew the Word of God. 
 
 But the Sunday school was not enough to Martha 
 Berry's new-born and abounding interest in these chil- 
 dren. Upon the heels of every Sunday school she pushed 
 a day school. Where there was none she made one; 
 and where there was a county school she extended its 
 term, paying teachers from her own purse, and making 
 herself a constant visitor and teacher. A new life sud- 
 denly sprang into being at the foot of the mountains. 
 
134 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 The immediate and surprising success of Miss Berry's 
 schools invites inquiry as to its cause. Who does not 
 know Sunday schools that are born with the sun and die 
 with its setting? Who is unfamiliar with day schools 
 that would rather send their teachers to Possum Trot 
 than call them from there? What made Miss Berry's 
 work a revivifying power in this dry stubble? It is the 
 secret of the seer: Martha Berry found a life, not a 
 profession. Surprised into a Sunday school, she did not 
 organize an institution; she told Bible stories. When 
 needing a shelter, she did not appoint a committee; she 
 pointed out a " board" tree and ladled lemonade. When 
 she started a day school, she did not write a program on 
 the blackboard; she took her children for long walks in 
 the piney woods, naming the plants and wild flowers 
 and telling stories of the birds, the insects, and the but- 
 terflies. Of these things she found her children patheti- 
 cally ignorant, and pathetically eager to learn. "The 
 Sunday Lady" entered into their lives, making them 
 broader and more beautiful and more purposeful. Who 
 would not follow such a leader, even though she be 
 "a woman a-bossin' of a house-roofin' "? 
 
 It was in 1898 that Miss Berry was called from her 
 Sunday reverie in the little log den to become an apostle 
 to the mountaineers. For the next four years she was 
 busy conducting her Sunday schools and day schools. 
 Then she entered another phase. It was as if she had 
 been building board shanties and patching leaky roofs 
 so far: now she would seize pick Wid spade and dig for 
 solid foundations. 
 
 She saw that the day school was not enough. It 
 taught principles of cleanliness, thrift, industry, only 
 to have them overturned when the children went back 
 to their cabin homes. She must have a school home 
 where the right ideas and habits might become fixed 
 by practise, and where pupils from a distance might 
 come and stay while attending school. 
 
 Miss Berry tried to interest friends in her project, 
 
Coals from the Altar 135 
 
 but in vain. Then she did not turn back; for she had 
 committed herself before God to this mission. She went 
 to her iron deposit box and took out an old deed; she 
 went to her bank and took out a thousand dollars. From 
 her father's gift to his little girl she cut off eighty-three 
 acres; she built on it, besides the little schoolhouse 
 already standing there, a two-story home for the school; 
 and all this she deeded to trustees as the nucleus of the 
 Berry School for Boys. 
 
 Then the mountain boys came in. They came with 
 mules and ox-teams and on foot, packing their small 
 bundles of clothing and often a week's provisions of 
 hominy and potatoes. Miss Berry and her first assist- 
 ant, Miss Brewster, went to live in the boys' home. 
 They shared their rough shelter and their coarse food, 
 determined that they would stand with their boys 
 and not above them in their effort to help. They showed 
 them by precept and example how to live and learn 
 by doing. There were no servants; no class but an aris- 
 tocracy of labor. 
 
 This was satisfactory enough to the mountain boy 
 within the bounds of his code. He was ready to plow 
 in the fields, chop in the woods, hammer on the house; 
 he was not wholly off his ground in milking the cows, 
 cooking his food, and making his bed; but there were 
 some things too undisguisedly woman's work. The 
 first Monday Miss Berry summoned her young guard 
 of mountaineers for their first lesson in laundering. 
 The laundry was a wash-tub out under a tree. 
 
 "Now, boys," said Miss Berry, "we are going to 
 wash clothes. I will show you how. Then each boy is 
 to wash his own garments." 
 
 There was silence, an electric silence, while the moun- 
 taineer considered. This was indeed woman's work, 
 nay, more, negro's work. Science was sweet, but was 
 it worth such degradation? The group fidgeted for 
 a minute, and then their spokesman, a tall, strapping 
 young fellow, said, "No ma'am! I ain't never seen 
 
136 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 no man do no washing an' what's more I ain't goin' 
 to do it." 
 
 Calmly Miss Berry played her last card. "If you 
 will not do the washing," she said, "you may watch me 
 while I do it for you." Into the tub went her soft white 
 arms. It was her first washing likewise. Up and down 
 sloshed the clothes over the wash-board, up and down 
 bent the back of the gentle washerwoman. The boys 
 stood sheepishly regarding her. Finally, exhausted, she 
 straightened her aching back and leaned in weariness 
 against the tub. The chivalry of the mountaineer, 
 running in unaccustomed channels, asserted itself at 
 last. "I ain't never seen it done," declared the former 
 speaker, "but I'm a-goin' to wash them clothes." And 
 dashing in, he led his companions in a charge to vic- 
 tory. It was there settled that the Berry School should 
 stand for doing whatever needed to be done, that it 
 should make men unafraid of any task that life might 
 bring them. And perhaps just then was born this motto 
 of the school's, "Be a lifter, not a leaner." 
 
 Today there is not only a Berry School for Boys, 
 but, three-quarters of a mile distant, a Martha Berry 
 School for Girls. There are three thousand acres in the 
 school estate, and more than a score of buildings, all 
 erected by the students. Two hundred forty boys and 
 one hundred twenty girls are all that as yet the school 
 can admit, and for lack of room many are turned away. 
 
 The buildings are simple and in harmony with the 
 surroundings and the life work of the students. A home 
 life and atmosphere is maintained in the school, the 
 teachers living with their pupils and making them- 
 selves in effect the idealized parents of these children. 
 The Bible is a daily text-book in precept and in life. 
 The industries that are most characteristic and most 
 vital in the life of the mountaineer are here taught in 
 developed form: the domestic arts, dairying, weaving, 
 basket-making, carpentry, agriculture, mechanics. And 
 the mountains are feeling deeply the impulse. Scores 
 
Coals from the Altar 137 
 
 of Berry graduates are at work in the mountains and 
 the piedmont, in schools, on farms, in shops and offices, 
 molding homes and communities, and helping to de- 
 velop a manhood and womanhood that will pay to the 
 world their debt a hundred fold. 
 
 The Berry estate belongs now to the Berry School; 
 Martha Berry belongs to the age. Most intimately, 
 indeed, is she claimed by her boys and girls, and next 
 by the men and women of the Georgia mountains; but 
 the influence of her faith and devotion has gone, not 
 nation-wide only, but far out into the foreign world. 
 There can be no regret to Martha Berry for the interrup- 
 tion of her reverie by those little wide-eyed children on 
 that long-ago Sunday afternoon. 
 
 The spirit born that April evening in the little log 
 cabin has its shrine today in the larger cabin built to 
 commemorate it. This idealized " cabin" stands among 
 its dogwoods and honeysuckle and rose bushes, with 
 its latch-string ever out. Here on Sunday afternoons 
 gather the boys and the girls as then: forerunners gathered 
 years ago. They enter and seat themselves upon the 
 skins and rugs and settles about Miss Berry's chair; 
 and again are heard in the gentle tones of "the Sunday 
 Lady" the stories and the lessons of the old, old Book 
 that has been the inspiration of her life and work. And 
 out of hundreds of hearts and minds, strengthened, 
 purified, equipped, ennobled, is flowing forth a stream 
 of answering love to the mountains and the world. 
 Could ever prophet ask for greater reward on earth? 
 
 * * * fl- 
 
 it was not long ago that a sympathetic visitor to the 
 Kentucky mountains apologized for there being as yet, 
 he said, "no native leaders in church or educational 
 work among these people." He spoke, doubtless, from 
 his own observation; but only a few miles off the track 
 he took, there stands the monument of the energy, the 
 indomitable leadership, of a son of the mountains. 
 Shortly after the Revolution, there came wandering 
 
138 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 through the wilds of southeastern Kentucky a North 
 Carolina pioneer by the name of Burns. Finding the 
 country well to his liking, he stopped short of his ob- 
 jective, Boonesborough hi the Blue-grass, and in this 
 mountain land he reared his family and laid the founda- 
 tion of his clan. His great-grandson, cast in the mold 
 of his fathers 7 Calvinism and mantled with the later 
 coming Baptist faith, became a mountain preacher. 
 
 The land in which he lived had become, as it has re- 
 mained to very recent times, the stronghold of the clan 
 spirit, the fighting-ground of the feudist. As hi the days 
 of Daniel Boone, so still, it was the frontier, without 
 roads, without commerce, without schools, with law as 
 every man's right arm and straight-seeing eye could make 
 it. Preacher Burns ranged up and down through the 
 mountains, preaching his gospel of election and damna- 
 tion to a Covenanter breed that made it fit well with 
 their stern law of might and right. 
 
 Three or four years before the Civil War, the father, 
 fearing that his sons would become involved in the feuds, 
 moved his family over to Virginia, a land in all respects 
 like his own except for the bloody quarrels of men. 
 Here in the West Virginia mountains was born to the 
 Kentucky preacher his youngest son, James A. Burns. 
 
 The boy grew up with the education of the wilder- 
 ness: rough living, scant learning, hard blows, keen senses 
 alert for danger and advantage. Some of his father's 
 creed and precept was woven into his mental fiber; but 
 as for books, he had obtained, when he was fifteen, the 
 full extent of his youth's schooling just ten months. 
 
 When James Burns was twenty-one years old, his 
 father died, and the young man very soon returned to 
 the home of his clan, in Clay County, Kentucky. Here, 
 as his father had feared, he found the whole community 
 aflame with the spirit of the feud. Many of his rela- 
 tives had fallen, and the supreme purpose in the lives 
 of those remaining was to avenge their deaths. Burns, 
 big-boned, strong of muscle and hard of fist, quick of 
 
Coals from the Altar 139 
 
 eye and unerring with rifle or pistol, was called upon 
 to play a man's part among them, and to the call of 
 the clan he responded. 
 
 His party one day made an attack upon a home be- 
 longing to the rival faction, but when they tried to rush 
 the place, they found themselves outfought. Young Burns, 
 with empty rifle and at hand-grips with a foe, was hit 
 over the head a mighty blow with a rifle-barrel, and was 
 left for dead upon the field by his retreating party. 
 His genial enemies dragged him by the heels out of the 
 path he obstructed, and threw him over the fence. 
 
 The next morning Burns awoke to find himself upon 
 a bed in the very cabin he had so unsuccessfully assaulted. 
 During the night, in his delirium, he had again attempted 
 to force his way in, and had been again knocked down. 
 But his " enemies" then kindly cared for him until he 
 came to himself, and sent him away in peace, explaining, 
 in response to his dazed inquiries, that his injuries had 
 come from his falling and hurting himself! 
 
 Arriving at his own home, John Burns betook him- 
 self to a densely wooded mountain, where, like another 
 Saul of Tarsus, he remained studying over the revela- 
 tion that had come with his striking down. For what 
 purpose, he asked himself, had he been brought to life 
 when both friends and enemies had supposed him dead? 
 Had God a purpose in sparing his hitherto unprofitable 
 life? What should he do now? 
 
 He determined that he would devote himself to the 
 work of his God-fearing father, but in a new, a broader 
 way, a way that he as yet saw but dimly, but which he 
 believed would clear as he should go forward. The feud, 
 he saw, was the curse of the mountains, but back of 
 the feud was its cause: the shut-in view, the uninstructed 
 pride, the undirected energy of his fellow mountaineers. 
 Their glory they were giving to the beast; their ideal 
 was force, their virtue brutish. But this they did not 
 know. They were not consciously trouble-makers. 
 They desired peace; and in a personal way they held 
 
140 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 that moral code of the nations, that to enforce a worthy 
 peace they must sometimes make war. As the mother 
 taught her daughter virtue, so she taught her son honor. 
 To maintain the one was no more a moral duty than to 
 maintain the other, by force of arms if necessary. The 
 feudist bedded his code in religion. 
 
 But upon young Burns was dawning another vision, 
 the vision of the glory of the Lord of hosts; and in his 
 ears was sounding the challenge, "Whom shall I send? 
 and who will go for us?" And faintly, vaguely, already 
 his lips were forming the reply: "Here am I; send me." 
 
 First of .all, he saw he must have more education. 
 With almost no money, he made his way to a little Bap- 
 tist college in Ohio, where he stayed for seven months. 
 He was an Elijah out of the mountains of Bashan, 
 Pondering his vision, he moved among his fellow stu- 
 dents moody, silent, responding only to the secret Voice 
 calling him to his work in the mountains. Undis- 
 covered and unremembered in the Ohio school, he passed 
 back into the life of the wilderness, and there began 
 to feel his way toward the fulfilment of his mission. 
 
 In 1892 he was back in Clay County, twenty-seven 
 years old, with a schooling that totaled seventeen months, 
 and a fortune no greater than that of the Man who had 
 not where to lay his head. But he had come to help his 
 people to the broader vision. So he taught school on Raid- 
 er's Creek and Crane Creek and Road Run and Red- 
 bird and Sexton and in Manchester, the county-seat. 
 When the scant county funds gave out, Burns organized 
 subscription schools; and with little or nothing of ma- 
 terial reward, kept going his campaign of Christian edu- 
 cation. As he worked and as he taught, he kept on 
 studying. The walls of a school were to him no exclu- 
 sive magazine of learning: he raided knowledge and drew 
 his supplies from books and men and God himself. When 
 he could, he went away for a little time to some school 
 where he could be instructed better than he could in- 
 struct himself. 
 
Coals from the Altar 141 
 
 Thus in 1898-99 he was in Berea College, and there 
 came to him the climax of his vision: he must start a 
 college in the heart of his own land. To a kindred spirit 
 in Berea, Rev. H. L. MacMurray, he confided his de- 
 termination, and these two men united to carry it out. 
 Without a dollar, but with a sublime faith that counted 
 the moving of mountains only the matter of germina- 
 ting a mustard seed, they went up to Clay County. 
 
 On the banks of Crane Creek stands an old mill that 
 in those days afforded the largest meeting-room in the 
 valley. To that mill building, in the late days of 1899, 
 J. A. Burns called together the clans, the Burnses and 
 the Aliens, the Combs and the Hensleys, men who had 
 never faced one another but warily and with fingers 
 ready to grip the pistol butt. They were called here 
 for a new, a strange purpose, called by one of their own 
 number who had been a feudist, but who was now 
 known and respected for a new sort of power, a force- 
 ful preacher and an earnest teacher. Some general 
 knowledge of his purpose they had, but what mixed 
 purposes they themselves had, one and another, they 
 could not tell, and every man of them came armed. 
 
 Watchful and alert, the factions ranged themselves 
 on opposite sides of the mill room, and Burns stood up 
 by the old wooden hopper and addressed them. The 
 time, he said, had come for a new era in the mountains. 
 They had been rearing their sons for slaughter; should 
 they not turn them now to salvation? Should men 
 who had heard the gospel of Jesus Christ continue to 
 waylay one another like red Indians? There was a 
 higher call for men made in the image of God. There 
 was a call from God to spread the glory of the knowledge 
 of the Lord through all these mountains. The time was 
 come, and the means must be made. A Christian edu- 
 cation was demanded of them to prepare for their mis- 
 sion. Their children should be messengers of heaven 
 instead of agents of hell. A college for Christian train- 
 ing was needed in their midst, and that college he was 
 
142 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 going to build. He had not a dollar, he told them, 
 but by God's grace he was going to start that college. 
 Did they want to help? 
 
 "It was a mighty quiet meeting/' says Burns. "I 
 didn't know what they were going to do. But I was right 
 glad when Lee Combs got up, and when Dan Burns 
 got up too, and they met in front of me. They did not 
 draw, but they shook hands. Then I knew that Oneida 
 College was going to be a success." With the hand- 
 clasp of those two men, the doom of the feud hi Clay 
 County was declared. 
 
 Then Burns and MacMurray set to work. Henry 
 Hensley gave them fifty dollars. Another gave them a 
 little tract of twelve acres of land. This was at Oneida, 
 where Redbird, Bullskin, and Goose creeks unite to form 
 the south fork of the Kentucky River. With tools fash- 
 ioned from two old crowbars, Burns quarried the stones 
 for the foundation of his first building. It was at dawn 
 one morning when he set that first stone in place for the 
 wall of Oneida College. Carefully and firmly he set it, 
 in the wish that it might stand long. And then 
 simple ceremony to his first corner-stone laying all 
 alone on the hillside he stretched his arms toward heaven 
 and prayed for the souls of the men of his mount ains. 
 
 As his prayer went up, there came an answering 
 challenge: over the hill beyond a young feudist, drunk 
 with the fury of a fight just closed, came riding against 
 the sun, and its streaming light he greeted with a volley 
 of pistol shots. The new and the old joined battle that 
 morning on the Oneida hills, a battle of principles, not 
 of powder. Three years later that same young feudist 
 stepped into the water to be baptized by Burns, and his 
 surrender was typical of the victory won by this prophet 
 and his divine message to the mountains. 
 
 But it was not with ease that the new school grew. 
 MacMurray Hall rose at first under the unaided hands 
 of the teacher, then with the tardy help of some half- 
 hearted friends a plain, small building of two stories, 
 
Coals from the Altar 143 
 
 great only to spiritual eyes that look as God looks upon 
 the heart of things. 
 
 Then the pupils came, plenty of them, bringing their 
 provisions in sacks and baskets, with now and then a 
 few dollars meagerly earned but willingly expended in 
 laying the foundation of power in their souls. Food and 
 other needs were knotty problems to the teachers. Night 
 after night, early in the history of the school, Burns and 
 a fellow-teacher sat out by a great flat rock that juts 
 into the river, sat by a fire while they mastered the next 
 day's lessons hi studies where some of their students 
 were pushing them hard, sat there poring over then* 
 books while their trot-lines led off from the rock to catch 
 the catfish for their breakfast. Catfish and corn and 
 mostly catfish helped to lay the early foundations 
 of Oneida College. 
 
 The needs pressed. From far away the young men 
 of the mountains came down to this center of new civi- 
 lization. The first little building was overcrowded at 
 once. At the close of the year their current expenses 
 had put them in debt two hundred dollars. Burns went 
 down into "The Settlements," to try to raise the money. 
 But he found times hard, the churches pressed by the 
 Mission Board to make up the foreign budget, and a 
 general disbelief prevailing on the part of officials in the 
 missionary character of a school in the home land. Not 
 a hearing could he get in a single church, and at last he 
 turned his steps homeward, discouraged but not de- 
 spairing, for he believed in the God of Elijah. 
 
 At Winchester he found a man whose pastor he had 
 been in Clay County, a "feud leader" who had moved 
 away from the troubled zone to save his children. This 
 man called upon his pastor to help, but the pastor said 
 they were sorely pressed to raise money for missions, 
 and the best he could do was to give the pulpit to Mr. 
 Burns and let him state his needs at the close of the ser- 
 mon. Thus Burns faced his first Blue-grass audience, 
 and taking the text, "The weapons of our warfare are 
 
144 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down 
 of strongholds," preached more for himself than for 
 his congregation. Afterwards he told what they were 
 trying to do at Oneida, and of their needs, whereupon a 
 deacon arose and said, "I believe we ought to help this 
 cause, and I will start the contribution with fifty dol- 
 lars." At the close of the service, the pastor, rejoicing, 
 brought him a gift from his people of a little more than 
 the amount needed. 
 
 Soon after this Dr. and Mrs. J. B. Marvin, of Louis- 
 ville, heard of his work, and gave him five thousand 
 dollars, which built the ten-thousand-dollar hall that 
 makes the center of Oneida. The mountaineers, con- 
 verted now and sharing his vision, gave what they could 
 of tune and strength and little offerings. They gave, 
 too, then- sons and their daughters, but at first only 
 their sons could be received. 
 
 One day, down the valley of Bullskin Creek came an 
 old man with two mules and three grown daughters 
 mounted thereon. They forded the river and presented 
 themselves before Burns, an offering of the woman- 
 hood of the mountains to his mission, the mission of 
 God. But there was no place for them, and no money 
 to make a place. With tears in his eyes, Burns said to 
 them, "I can't take you. I have got nothing to feed you, 
 and there is no place where you can sleep." Answering 
 tears streamed down the faces of the girls and of the 
 old man, then 1 father. Silently, with the sadness of the 
 mountains' ages upon then 1 faces and forms, they turned 
 back upon their mules, up Bullskin Valley, to the fate 
 from which they had fled. 
 
 Said Burns, "That must not be. We must have a 
 home for girls. Our women must not lag behind our 
 men if the mountains are to be reclaimed." Mr. R. 
 Carnahan, of Louisville, who had become their treasurer, 
 encouraged him in his plans to make such a home, prom- 
 ising to help all he could in meeting the bills. Burns 
 started out again to raise money in the churches, but 
 
Coals from the Altar 145 
 
 his experience was a repetition of the early part of his 
 former effort. Returning to Oneida, with money no- 
 where in sight, he had to acquiesce in the decision of 
 his fellows to stop work on the building. Then the 
 president of a building and loan association stepped for- 
 ward with an offer of a loan which sent the building to 
 completion, and opened a way for the girls of the moun- 
 tains. Today Oneida College for men and women opens 
 its doors to five hundred students each year. 
 
 It feels its mission only begun, and but little developed. 
 Not books only, but applied knowledge, Burns and his 
 coworkers seek to teach their people. A thirteen-hun- 
 dred-acre farm is the broad foundation upon which the 
 industries have begun to be built, and Burns and his 
 fellows dream with hands weaving a fabric out of 
 the dream of industries made from the ancient arts 
 of the mountain home and shop, industries that shall 
 keep the individuality and the beauty of the mountains 
 with their creators, and for the blessing of the nation 
 as well. 
 
 The hand of Oneida is reaching out farther into the 
 mountains, up the creeks, through the narrow valleys, 
 upon the mountainsides. One branch school has been 
 established, and others are being planted. Along with 
 the older agencies, Oneida is doing its part in teaching 
 and preparing the mountains for their wider destiny. 
 To it belongs the peculiar power of self-uplift; for the 
 blood of its teachers and its trained workers who are 
 going out into the mountains by the score, is the blood 
 of the clan, the people for whom it is giving its all. 
 
 To this dreamer of dreams, this seer of visions, this 
 man of faith and revealer of forces that were hidden in 
 the providences of God, has come the reward of seeing 
 his people put their feet upon the first steps of the ladder 
 on which angels are ascending and descending, and 
 where at the summit is God. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 No reposeful life are these schools or their founders 
 10 
 
146 
 
 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 spending now. The struggle for maintenance, for greater 
 facilities to meet growing demands, for means to spread 
 their influence in extension work far back into the moun- 
 tains, press more and more heavily upon the shoulders 
 that are bearing these weights. Time and talents and 
 strength that might seem too precious to spend outside 
 the weaving of the fabric, are spent to exhaustion in 
 the work outside, praying for the warp upon which the 
 school loom is weaving its marvelous patterns from the 
 souls of the mountains. But the Lord that called the 
 messengers, the God that gave the message, he it is that 
 made the quest; and it must be that in the tapestry he 
 has planned, he would have thus revealed the subtle, 
 seamless union of lowland and highland, rich and poor, 
 the thank-offering of them that can give and the more 
 abounding love of them that have received much. 
 
xrf 
 
"The school should be permeated with the re- 
 ligion of Jesus Christ. The mountain people are 
 naturally religious ; they love the service of the 
 church. No subject is more attractive to them 
 than the Bible. Nothing will do more for them 
 than the pure gospel. And there is no better way 
 of bringing them under its influence than through 
 a school that is founded and conducted on the 
 eternal principles of God's Word." EDGAR TUFTS. 
 
XI 
 
 A SCHOOL OF SIMPLICITY. 
 
 HPEN miles above Nashville the yellow flood of the 
 I Cumberland curves itself into a bottle form known 
 as Neeley's Bend. Across the narrow neck of this bottle, 
 touching the river on either side, lies an ancient estate, 
 a part of the original grant to the Neeley family after 
 whom "the bend' 7 was named. The blue-grass and 
 limestone of its upland furnished pasture for the cattle 
 and intermittent labor for the slaves, as testify the long 
 lines of solid stone fence yet standing. The bottom lands 
 along the river were magazines of fertility that bore 
 long and patiently the drain of a corn and wheat mon- 
 otony; while, rounding the angles and taking posses- 
 sion of the shaly spots, buckbrush and oak fought with 
 the blue-grass that claimed proprietary interest hi the 
 limestone soil. 
 
 Far back in the estate, behind its locust avenue 
 and surrounded by a massive limestone wall, stood the 
 old farm house. Its cedar log walls, piled up in early 
 days, had later received the garnish of clapboard and 
 paint, until nothing bespoke its age as well as the massive 
 stone chimneys at either end, whose hewn and squared 
 blocks have darkened under the storms of more than 
 half a century. 
 
 To this estate, in the summer of 1904, came a little 
 company of teachers and students to begin a training 
 
 d49) 
 
150 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 school for Christian workers among the mountaineers. 
 Whatever the fame of the Nelson Place in ante-bellum 
 days, they found its splendor faded. The rich but shallow 
 soil of the upland had washed until in many places only 
 bare rock greeted the sun. Weeds and briers were over- 
 running the pastures; the clay of the benchland was 
 baked and hard; and only the river bottoms still 
 upheld the old dynastic pride. Buildings were in dis- 
 repair; and the old tip-hatted log barn, sitting among 
 its pig-styes by the wide stone gate, and shaking its 
 leery finger at every passer-by, seemed typical of the 
 state of dissipation at which the place had arrived. 
 
 It was not the first choice of the company of educa- 
 tors who had come to establish the school. The pre- 
 vious May, Doctors Sutherland and Magan, who had 
 long been interested in the educational problems of 
 the South, were prospecting for a location. With them 
 were their friends, Elder J. E. White, president of the 
 Southern Missionary Society, and for many years a 
 director of work among the colored people of the South; 
 his brother, Elder W. C. White; and their aged and 
 revered mother, Mrs. Ellen G. White. 
 
 Mrs. White had been from early life an earnest 
 worker in the ranks of reformers. As a temperance lec- 
 turer she had labored throughout America, and in Europe 
 and Australia, and was widely known as a speaker upon 
 religious and moral topics. Her writings in a score of 
 languages were sown throughout the world. She had 
 been one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist 
 Church, and during the sixty years of its existence 
 her teachings had been most influential in the spread 
 of the religious, the medical, and the educational work 
 of that small but active people. The principles of physi- 
 cal, mental, and spiritual health and power which she 
 and her colaborers advocated, had been formulated 
 into a system of education whose aim was the highest 
 perfection of the workers' physical and mental powers 
 for the service of their fellow-men. 
 
A School of Simplicity 151 
 
 Her interest in the problems of the South had been 
 long and deep, and her presence and counsel were highly 
 prized by those who were launching this new enterprise. 
 Their plans, indeed, were much too modest for Mrs. 
 White to endorse. Influenced partly by the smallness of 
 then* resources, they intended to go back into the 
 mountains, buy a small place, and give their attention for a 
 while at least to the local needs. But Mrs. White de- 
 clared that then- experience in training teachers and other 
 Christian workers should not thus be buried in a napkin, 
 and that they would do well to locate near to Nashville, 
 in contact with the important educational interests cen- 
 tering there, and in touch not only with the mountains 
 but with other rural sections of the South. She had seen 
 the Nelson Place, and felt it to be favorable in loca- 
 tion and character for their work. To their objection that 
 they had not enough money even for the purchase price, 
 to say nothing of development, she replied, "Have faith 
 in God. The Lord has led you through some hard places, 
 and given you deep experiences, and if you will trust 
 him, he will give you more. You will get the money, 
 and I will help you." To the objection that the land was 
 poor and rocky and the fertility of the soil depleted, 
 Mrs. White inquired: "Brethren, whom have you come 
 here to help?" The answer was, "These poor people in 
 the hills." 
 
 "And do you think it becoming for you to have the 
 best piece of land in the State to train yourselves to help 
 these people with very poor land in the hills?" 
 
 The argument closed, and the place was bought. 
 It lies ten miles north of Nashville and two and a half 
 miles east from the little station of Madison. 
 
 Four teachers long associated together in school work, 
 were the founders of the Nashville Agricultural and 
 Normal Institute, or, as it is more popularly known, 
 the Madison School. They were Dr. E. A. Sutherland, 
 Dr. P. T. Magan, Miss M. Bessie DeGraw, and Mrs. 
 N. H. Druillard. With them, by twos and threes through- 
 
152 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 out the summer, came eleven students from Emmanuel 
 Missionary College in Michigan, some of whom were 
 to act as instructors. The first to occupy the place was 
 Mr. E. E. Brink, with two students. Mr. Brink had 
 been an instructor in industries at Emmanuel College; 
 and at the Madison School not only was he the pioneer, 
 but he has remained as a valued teacher and worker in 
 the industries. 
 
 Teachers and students alike, they came with no 
 temptation of money or other worldly advantage. They 
 were to have what they could make; and living depended 
 upon their making it. The dean gathered up the reins 
 of the mule team. The lady secretary, in a one-mule 
 cart, drove once a week to town with the butter made 
 by the president in the lean-to creamery. The treasurer, 
 a veteran in finance in institutions home and foreign, 
 laid her hand to the skillet and the broom. 
 
 When Mrs. Sutherland came, with Baby Joe and some 
 lady students, the question of lodging became acute. 
 The chief building was the "Old House," but the for- 
 mer owners had not yet given possession, and the next 
 best shelter was the servant quarters in the carriage 
 house, above the horse stables. Into this went the 
 ladies, to be followed in later years by successive relays 
 of new students. The ability of fresh recruits to endure 
 these rough accommodations before receiving better, 
 was something of a test of character; and thus among the 
 students the little old weather-beaten barn came to bear 
 the affectionate title, "Probation Hall." 
 
 In October the company took possession of the "Old 
 House." The school was a family; its first classes were 
 morning and evening worship, followed by practical 
 studies of educational conditions in the South, how to 
 make the farm pay, how to bring the stock through the 
 winter, how to get money for furniture, machinery, 
 buildings, etc. The genial, one-sided warmth of the 
 north-room fireplace fell nights on the forum of a young 
 democracy, that mingled discussions of folk-lore and 
 
A School of Simplicity 153 
 
 pedagogy and balanced rations with needlework and 
 knitting and administration of bran poultices to chapped 
 hands. 
 
 The Madison School was born under conditions 
 that approximated those of pioneer days. Their tables 
 were of plank, their dressers of dry-goods boxes. Their 
 food was largely restricted to what they had found in 
 their fields and the products of their dairy. This con- 
 dition of enforced economy, if not exactly the choice, 
 was at least within the plans of the founders. They knew 
 that to train themselves and their students for service 
 to the poor, there was nothing more effective than pri- 
 vation and sacrifice. Not only in the first days of hard- 
 ship, but throughout its history their school must be 
 a school of simplicity. The body must be accustomed 
 to hard work and simple diet; the reins of the mind must 
 be girded up by self-control and zealous purpose. The 
 closer the living conditions at the school approached 
 those to be met when students should have become 
 teachers, the more adaptable and efficient would those 
 teachers be. No steam-heated, electrically-lighted build- 
 ings, no intricate and expensive machinery, no wealth 
 of imported foodstuffs, were appropriate for the men 
 and women in training for service to the mountains. 
 
 Vegetarians by principle, they omitted from their 
 diet the most costly food staple. While seeking to pro- 
 vide from the farm and garden and orchard a nourish- 
 ing and sufficiently varied diet, they denied themselves 
 the world-wide variety in which many families of today 
 indulge. It is the idea of the founders to keep the farm 
 machinery equipment as simple as possible. The stu- 
 dent farmer trudges in the furrow behind his mule team. 
 In the laundry, the women rub out the clothes in the hand 
 tub. Few institutional facilities are introduced, and 
 the greatest possible simplicity is maintained in all de- 
 partments, that the student may not separate himself 
 by too great a chasm from the conditions with which he 
 must deal in his future work. 
 
154 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Buildings there must be; for though the "Old House" 
 and "Probation Hall" were crammed for recitation 
 and dining and lodging requirements, the second comers 
 promptly overflowed into the barns. What should be 
 the form of the new buildings? Should they be large and 
 expensive and equipped with all modern conveniences? 
 If such should be provided here, what would be the 
 wishes and strivings of the graduates who should later 
 go out to establish their own work? The management 
 of the school from the first adopted the principle of mak- 
 ing every study, every industry, every improvement, 
 educational not in theory only but in practise, and so 
 suited to the needs of the people to be served as to re- 
 quire little modification when applied to their conditions. 
 The buildings, then, should be small, simple, and in- 
 expensive, yet models of neatness and good workman- 
 ship. As the students with then 1 teachers should engage 
 in erecting these, they would receive a practical elemen- 
 tary training in the art of building, a training suited to 
 their afterwork. This educational purpose was the prime 
 consideration, though there were material advantages be- 
 sides, such as lessened danger from fire and avoidance 
 of large investments. 
 
 So the cottage plan of housing students was adopted; 
 and the institution, instead of being comprised in a few 
 large buildings, is composed of a score of small, neat 
 cottages and a few public buildings slightly larger, 
 patterns of simplicity for the smaller schools to be oper- 
 ated in the hills and mountains. The large buildings are 
 Kinne Hall (the boarding department), Gotzian Hall 
 (the main school building), and the Rural Sanitarium. 
 To these is to be added the new hospital, provided 
 through the generosity of Mrs. Josephine Gotzian, a 
 long-time friend of the school, designed, with its treat- 
 ment rooms and wards, to minister to the needs of sick 
 students and others who may not be able to pay the 
 rates of the sanitarium. 
 
 The Madison School has attempted the solution of 
 
A School of Simplicity 155 
 
 a problem which most schools have declared incapable 
 of solution; that is, how a school without endowment 
 may give its students an education without payment of 
 tuition. In other words, can a student pay his way 
 through school by his labor, without the school's having 
 a deficit in consequence? When Hampton Institute, 
 practically the pioneer of the modern industrial school, 
 was challenged on the grounds that "such an education 
 will not pay," General Armstrong conceded, "Of course 
 it cannot pay in a money way, but it will pay in a moral 
 way"; and that "it cannot pay in a money way" has 
 been the concession of most educators ever since, along 
 with the twin conclusion that because of its educational 
 value, the industrial school should be supported by the 
 public, through gifts, bequests, appropriations, and the 
 proceeds of endowments. It is of interest, therefore, 
 to see how the Madison School, without endowment, 
 enables its students and itself to meet current expenses 
 and avoid deficits. 
 
 Strictly speaking, the school has an endowment. 
 But it is not an endowment in the usual sense a 
 capital from the interest of whose extraneous invest- 
 ments there is a steady income of cash. Instead, the 
 "endowment" is a working capital in the form of in- 
 dustries, which by student labor are made profitable 
 enough to meet expenses. Subscriptions were asked 
 from interested friends for the purpose of stocking the 
 farm and equipping it with necessary barns, stables, 
 and machinery. It was believed that these would fur- 
 nish productive labor by means of which the student 
 could earn the greater part of his livelihood while ob- 
 taining his education. It will also be clear that such a 
 system could only live and succeed where there was a spirit 
 of the utmost self-denial and self-sacrifice upon the part 
 of the instructors. 
 
 This theory, of course, is neither original nor untried. 
 But as every industrial teacher knows, student labor 
 is, on the average, about the most costly of all labor, and 
 
156 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 in the matter of profit cannot often be reckoned on the 
 average labor basis. This is one of the facts that has 
 seemingly proved the incapacity of the industrial school 
 to make its expenses. 
 
 The other chief factor of this incapacity is that the 
 system of literary education so occupies the time of the 
 student that he is unable to devote enough hours to the 
 earning of his expenses. And so long as he is possessed 
 with the common idea that he must not be expected 
 to pay his way while getting his education, he will not 
 strive very hard to do it. If, however, the student can 
 be inspired with the belief that normal life involves the 
 getting of an education while supporting oneself, if the 
 curriculum can be so adjusted as to give proportionate 
 time and thought to mental, physical, and spiritual mat- 
 ters, and if the student's energies can be so controlled 
 and directed as to make his labor profitable, then by 
 careful management the student and the school (given 
 its equipment) can be self-supporting. 
 
 Such a school, obviously, must depart from some 
 cherished ideals of the popular school. It must lay em- 
 phasis upon neglected phases of education. It must 
 exchange a scholarly leisure for an intense activity of 
 body as well as mind. Such a school requires the ser- 
 vices of self-sacrificing teachers and students. Over all, 
 it requires for its sustenance an incentive so deep and 
 all-embracing that it shuts out all other motives and 
 allurements. Such an incentive is the love of Christ, 
 intensified by the knowledge of his soon coming in power 
 and glory to close the age-long controversy with sin and 
 Satan. To the heralding of that coming are these 
 workers pledged. Not to that alone, but to the sound- 
 ing of the last notes of the gospel of free salvation 
 through Christ. And not to that alone, but to the 
 revelation of Jesus Christ in his servants today, through 
 ministry to the sick, the needy, the ignorant, and the 
 sorrow-bowed. For the further development of this 
 work was the Madison School established, 
 
A School of Simplicity 157 
 
 Its plan of government is framed to that end. Stu- 
 dents and teachers are placed upon the common basis 
 of Christian fellowship. The laws of the school are made 
 and executed by the whole school, in session known as 
 the Union Body. This Union Body relieves the faculty of 
 much of the routine of government. The school family 
 is subject to self-imposed laws, and by a system of checks 
 and reports each member is held to rectitude, first by 
 his own will, and second by pressure of the Union Body. 
 This discipline covers every act of the school life: study, 
 work, physical habits, social life, religious duties, mis- 
 sionary effort, and all the ways in which the individual 
 life is related to the community. 
 
 But the Union Body has a far wider field than dis- 
 cipline. Through its committees, it controls all depart- 
 ments of labor, plans for their operation, improvement, 
 and extension, subject only in matters involving ex- 
 penditure to the executive board. 
 
 The daily program is full to the limit, but simple 
 in its operation, rendered so by the adjustment made 
 between study and labor. Labor is dignified by being 
 put on a scientific basis and by being conducted by 
 teachers of mental and spiritual culture. That man 
 was created to work and that work is good for man is 
 more than a slogan in the school; it is an atmosphere 
 that pervades all departments. 
 
 In order to maintain this atmosphere it has been 
 necessary to diverge from the program of those schools 
 which give their greatest attention to literary attain- 
 ments. Here each student carries one major study, 
 spending three hours daily in class work and being al- 
 lowed an equal time for preparation. During one term 
 the student covers the work for which the entire school 
 year is required when three or more studies are taken 
 at one time. He thus completes his studies hi succes- 
 sion instead of in combination. 
 
 The following are some of the advantages of this 
 system which have been noted, not only by insjbruc- 
 
158 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 tors in the institution but by others of experience hi 
 school work who have made a comparative study of the 
 results. The plan enables a teacher to carry one 
 class during one-half of the day and to spend the other 
 half-day in an industrial department. It gives him op- 
 portunity to develop the subject in hand, to use the 
 library and the laboratory, to do experimental work, and 
 to correlate with the major subject those fundamental 
 branches so often neglected. 
 
 On the part of the student the plan develops concen- 
 tration of thought, it encourages him to delve beneath 
 the surface and to do original research work, and to pur- 
 sue to completion one subject before taking another. 
 This advantage is appreciated by the man or woman 
 who can spend but a limited time in school. The student 
 compacts his recitation work into a period of three 
 hours unhampered by the conflicting requirements of 
 his fellows' programs, and the remainder of his day he 
 is free to divide between manual work and study. He 
 obtains both training and practise in his manual sub- 
 jects, to which he is free to devote five hours a day. His 
 work with the industries is made educational, and for 
 it he receives both credit and remuneration. Thus the 
 business of getting a living is taken from its usual sub- 
 ordinate place in the school and from its usual superior 
 place in ordinary life to occupy its proper place of co- 
 ordination with intellectual and spiritual activities. 
 
 For the institution this program has its advantages 
 also. For while the forenoon is devoted to manual la- 
 bor by one group of students and to class work by another 
 group, the groups reverse operations in the afternoon, 
 and thus every manual department is provided with a 
 full corps of student workers through the entire day. 
 At the same time the intellectual work is not slighted. 
 This plan makes it possible to keep the equipment of 
 all the departments busy during the working days, 
 and herein lies one reason for the financial success of 
 the industrial departments. The student receives pay 
 
A School of Simplicity 159 
 
 for his work at ten cents an hour. His expenses are re- 
 duced to the lowest point made possible by large pur- 
 chases and the production of most of the necessaries of 
 life on the school farm; and the average student is en- 
 abled by about six hours' labor a day to meet his school 
 expenses. The student actually produces to the ex- 
 tent of his credit; the school does not merely give him 
 credit and then seek outside aid to cover that credit. 
 
 This system of course requires value-producing in- 
 dustries. The various departments of the farm give 
 real productive work. For cash with which to purchase 
 outside supplies, the garden, the dairy, the live stock, 
 and the poultry have been in turn or together depended 
 upon. The later establishment of the Rural Sanitarium 
 (which is discussed in another chapter) has developed an 
 internal market for the farm products, and a source of 
 income which has surpassed most of the others. 
 
 Thus the Madison School, by simple living, careful 
 planning, and a rational adjustment of the relations 
 of the mental and the manual work, has for a decade 
 continued to demonstrate the possibility of conducting 
 a school where students earn most of then* school ex- 
 penses, such as board and lodging, and thus learn how 
 to make their after-life a combination of work, study, 
 and service. 
 
XII 
 LEARNING TO TEACH 
 
 THE school at Madison is a normal school in every 
 sense of the term. No part of its life is left unmarked 
 as a factor in the production of teachers. Madison's 
 aim is the training not of mere teachers of abstract 
 sciences, but of teachers of the art of living. The Chris- 
 tian teacher should have a good grasp of scholastic 
 branches; but more than this, he must have ability in the 
 practical things of life, a deep consecration to the high- 
 est ideals, and a clear vision of the end toward which he 
 is aiming. 
 
 In his daily life he must be systematic, orderly, 
 frugal, industrious, thorough, keen to see, and quick 
 to act. If he misses these qualities in his practise, all 
 his theorizing will go for little. In administrative af- 
 fairs he must have good judgment developed from ex- 
 perience, broad vision, quick and accurate decision, 
 and energy. Over all things else, he must obtain a sense 
 of the value of lives, of minds, of souls, so that he shall 
 not mistake material advantage for real success, nor 
 displace matters of eternal weight with the light things 
 of time. 
 
 At this school the effort is made to give the student, 
 
 not merely a preparation for life, but an experience 
 
 in life itself. If by experience in school he learns how 
 
 to make his living, how to handle difficulties of home 
 
 (160) 
 
On Madison Campus. 
 
 1 The Madison School was born under conditions approximating those 
 of pioneer days." Page 153. 
 
Learning to Teach 161 
 
 and farm and school and church, how to impart his 
 knowledge to others, and how to combine in proper 
 proportion all the elements of life work, study, teach- 
 ing, recreation if he learns all this by experience, he 
 has not merely subscribed to a doctrine and been la- 
 beled with a degree; he has had stamped upon him a 
 character, wrought within him a course of life. 
 
 The student at Madison works. There is work in 
 the schoolroom, work in the field, work in administra- 
 tion. The students who come there are expected to be 
 of sufficient maturity, and to be able to find diversion 
 and recreation in the varied activities of earnest life. 
 The sports of athletics find no place in the school. The 
 usual rivalry of school life is marked by its absence. 
 No college yells rend the air, no class colors flaunt their 
 silly pride, no strife of teams and clubs and classes dis- 
 tract the life. "Life is real, life is earnest, " is the work- 
 ing principle. 
 
 But cheer! Good cheer lives in Madison. Every- 
 body is too hopeful to be discontented, too busy to be 
 unhappy. Social life in the school is practically a family 
 life. The students become thoroughly acquainted as 
 they work side by side hi the field, nurse at the same 
 bedside, study from the same text, plan together for 
 the conduct of their common interests. 
 
 The evening chapel is the pulse-beat of the school. 
 On some evenings teachers lead in studies of principles 
 and purposes for which the school stands. Other even- 
 ings are hi charge of the students, hi the study of cur- 
 rent history, the reporting and planning of an active 
 missionary propaganda, and the rendering of programs 
 literary and musical, in which their life interests receive 
 characteristic expression. One evening each week is 
 "Union Meeting," the administrative and legislative 
 session of the school. 
 
 Once or twice a year a school outing is planned, 
 usually to one of the hill schools which have been opened 
 by former students. The annual convention of self- 
 11 
 
1 62 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 supporting workers brings together a company that 
 resembles the old family reunions of a New England 
 Thanksgiving, and in this the school students are as 
 younger members of the family. It is one of the busy 
 holidays that typify the spirit of the work. 
 
 The literary side of the school is vigorously con- 
 ducted. Class work is carried on during practically 
 the entire year. There are four terms of nine weeks 
 each. Between each of these comes a short course of 
 three weeks. These " short courses "are little marvels 
 of concentration. For the most part they are devoted 
 to the consideration of industrial subjects. Carpentry, 
 blacksmithing, cobbling, sewing, box furniture-making, 
 cabinet-making, cooking, and the giving of simple treat- 
 ments are taught. On account of the nature of the work 
 the student can profitably and without undue fatigue 
 devote the greater part of the day to the one line which 
 he has selected. The results achieved in an educational 
 way have been far beyond anything which the manage- 
 ment had dared to hope. It has been demonstrated that 
 by consolidating his time and concentrating his energy 
 on a single branch, the student is able in a remarkably 
 short period of time to attain a practical working knowl- 
 edge and a creditable degree of efficiency in his subject. 
 
 The main departments of the school are the normal 
 and the medical. In either of these are included the 
 industrial studies, which are an essential part of the 
 student's equipment. 
 
 A close relation is kept between all the studies and 
 practical life. Madison is fitting the majority of its 
 students to be Christian teachers and health workers 
 in rural communities; its natural science classes all have 
 an agricultural and medical bias, with appropriate text- 
 books. It is making of its students educational re- 
 formers; therefore not only its pedagogical subjects but 
 all of its history and Bible classes are aimed at the study 
 of education's history and philosophy. It is training its 
 students to be ministers to the world's needs; and it 
 
Learning to Teach 163 
 
 maintains in every study and every practise Bible 
 and physiology, diet and dress a singleness and inten- 
 sity of purpose toward that one object. At the close 
 of each short course an exhibit of the work done by each 
 class is displayed in the chapel and the class-rooms. 
 The entire school and frequently a number of visitors 
 come together to see the work which has been accom- 
 plished and to hear the students tell their experiences. 
 In brief talks the members of the carpentry class tell 
 of the things they have learned and done; those who 
 have enjoyed the class in simple treatments for the 
 sick, demonstrate a nurse's duties and a patient's pa- 
 tience; those from the bakery class reveal the secrets 
 of their gastronomic successes; and the dressmakers dis- 
 play the simple but neat and tasty garments of their 
 own making. 
 
 Two years of work in nursing and health principles 
 are given. A nurses' training class has been a chief fea- 
 ture of the school curriculum from early days. Since the 
 building of the sanitarium in 1907, the medical work 
 of Madison has played a most important part in the 
 institution. It is not the design of this course to prepare 
 the student to stand State Board examinations for nurses' 
 registration. The work is given rather with the desire 
 of fitting those who take it to be teachers of youth 
 in the things pertaining to the care of then* own bodies. 
 This line of study and practise combined with the normal 
 courses given in the school equips the student to become 
 a community teacher to a much fuller degree than or- 
 dinarily. The idea is inculcated that a rural teacher 
 should be a minister to sick bodies as well as a teacher 
 of mental subjects, that he should be able to instruct 
 those amongst whom he labors in the things which per- 
 tain to their material comfort, safety, and welfare. 
 
 To those who desire a more thorough training in these 
 lines, a course of another year's study is offered. Per- 
 sonal hygiene and the science of preventive medicine 
 are the strong features of this year's work, together with 
 
1 64 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 a thorough knowledge of simple remedies for home use. 
 
 If greater stress is laid upon any part of the curricu- 
 lum, it is upon those things which relate to the daily con- 
 duct of life. Finance is made a practical study. Some 
 students pay their expenses partly in cash; none are 
 allowed to do so wholly. The majority earn their entire 
 way by labor. A cash deposit is required upon entrance, 
 both as a safeguard to the school and as an indication 
 of the student's ability to provide for himself. This 
 deposit, or any part remaining above the student's ac- 
 count, is returned to him at the close of his school life. 
 
 In planning the student's industrial training, the 
 management have had regard to his future needs. No 
 student is kept continually at one line of work. A young 
 man will spend a while in the general farm department. 
 His ability to handle horses, to care properly for the tools 
 and machinery, is carefully noted by the one in charge; 
 his failures and errors are corrected, and a record is 
 kept of his progress and efficiency. Later this student 
 may be transferred to the dairy or the garden department, 
 where similar methods of training are pursued. Thus 
 in a practical home-spun fashion young men are trained 
 how to do well some of the common things of life. 
 
 A shop for the teaching of the rudiments of wood 
 and iron work has been provided. Its equipment is far 
 from being elaborate the theory being that the inter- 
 ests of the future rural community worker will be best 
 subserved by training him to do his work with tools 
 and appliances of the sort which he is likely to pos- 
 sess and be obliged to use in his own life work. It is 
 held that there is danger of educating men and women 
 in the uses of equipment which they can never afford to 
 own. If this is done the seeds of future discontent and 
 dislike for the humble station in life to which most men 
 and women are called will be engendered and a founda- 
 tion will be laid for mental, material, and moral failure. 
 
 The industries for women embrace nursing, domestic 
 work in all its ordinary branches, and gardening. The 
 
Learning to Teach 165 
 
 young women are instructed in the preparation of simple 
 yet healthful food. The work of the school and sanitarium 
 kitchens is performed by them under the direction of 
 instructors. They are taught how to make out a bill of 
 fare which will give a balanced ration. An attempt is 
 made to apply the lessons of the physiology class to the 
 every-day business of preparing meals for a hungry com- 
 pany of hard-working people. Food values are carefully 
 studied, the various degrees of digestibility of different 
 articles are taken into account. The necessity for due 
 proportions of proteids, carbohydrates and fats are con- 
 sidered in the making up of the daily menu. The caring 
 for dairy products and butter making is also taught and 
 some have become quite proficient in this work. 
 
 Every student takes care of his own room. The gen- 
 eral work of caring for the sanitarium, for the public 
 buildings, and the laundering of individual and institu- 
 tional linen, is done by the young women. 
 
 What the Madison student learns, he learns that he 
 may teach. He gathers here, puts into practise here, 
 the principles of system, order, industry, frugality; 
 careful planning, perfect execution; breadth of view and 
 decision of character; application of all sciences to prac- 
 tical life, and application of all one's own powers to 
 the problems of life self-support, study, teaching. 
 The normal work teaching to teach goes through 
 every study and every course. As the student learns 
 the laws of language, for example, and has them enforced 
 in class and out of class, the thought is impressed upon 
 him that he must become perfect in order that he may 
 teach others to be perfect. As he nails the studding to 
 the plate, as he turns the furrow in the field, as he mixes 
 the dough in the bakery, as he applies the fomentation 
 in the bathroom, he is taught that these things must 
 be learned perfectly, that they may have their perfect 
 work in the lives of others. Learning to teach, and 
 teaching for the purpose of salvation, this is the prin- 
 ciple that animates every phase of the work at Madison. 
 
XIII 
 THE OUT-SCHOOL MOVEMENT 
 
 A STATE senator was speaking at an educational 
 convention: "When I was school superintendent 
 of Sumner County/' he said, "we had a district up on 
 the rimlands where there had been no school for seven 
 years. The last teacher we had there was a young lady, 
 but though she drew her salary all right, she quit, and 
 never would go back. She had so much trouble that 
 she thought the best thing for her to do was to get mar- 
 ried. 
 
 "Well, four years ago a gentleman from that sec- 
 tion came down and told me there was a man up there 
 who had actually built a schoolhouse and paid for it 
 himself, and was holding school! We county super- 
 visors were used to sitting on the treasury-lid, and 
 didn't know how any schoolhouse could go up or any 
 school start without our knowing it first. So this re- 
 port excited my curiosity right away. I wanted to see 
 that man. So I opened communication, and made an 
 appointment with him, and that was my first acquaint- 
 ance with Professor Alden and his fellow-workers. They 
 are pure gold, twenty-four-carat. I know, and our peo- 
 ple know, what they can do and what they are doing. 
 They are in the forefront of the uplift of the rural school. 
 They are helping to develop a love for the country and 
 to bring a solution of its problems that will turn the tide 
 (166) 
 
The Out-School Movement 167 
 
 back from the city. If all the schools you people have 
 are like the three in Sumner County, we want more of 
 them. I am glad we have the cooperation of such 
 schools as Goodlettsville and Fountain Head." 
 
 The schools thus mentioned are two of the out- 
 schools the first two established by workers from 
 Madison. About a year and a half after the founding 
 of the Madison School, two of the charter members, 
 C. F. Alden and B. N. Mulford, were delegated to begin 
 the out-school work. The Madison School itself, in the 
 midst of a prosperous community, was not in direct 
 touch with the most needy classes. It enlisted and 
 trained for the service young men and women from both 
 North and South, who, however, must gain their prac- 
 tical experience through the establishment of homes and 
 small schools in more backward rural districts. 
 
 The " Nashville Basin" is a depression in the middle 
 of the State, with a rich calcareous soil, verdant with 
 blue-grass pastures and teeming with bountiful crops. 
 Nearly surrounding it are "the rimlands," a part of the 
 Cumberland piedmont. From the basin below, the land 
 rises steeply for five hundred feet to the rocky, sandy 
 edge of the upland. For ten or fifteen miles back the 
 land is comparatively poor, and in consequence these 
 "rimland" communities have received less development 
 than more favored sections. In conditions both phys- 
 ical and social their people are closely akin to the moun- 
 taineers of the Cumberland Plateau. 
 
 Fifteen miles from Madison and seven miles from 
 the railroad at Goodlettsville is the community men- 
 tioned at the beginning of the chapter. Here in Feb- 
 ruary, 1906, Alden, Mulford, and Charley Ashton went 
 to look for a place. 
 
 There was a seven-hundred-acre piece of woods for 
 sale, and out of this they bargained for two hundred 
 and fifty acres, at $2,000, borrowing $700 to make the 
 first payment. The last of February they came up 
 to the place, repaired the chicken house behind the 
 
1 68 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 main log cabin for a home, and began clearing land and 
 splitting rails for fencing. There was only a seven- 
 acre plot of ground already in cultivation; and that, 
 a white pipe-clayey land, had been for ninety years de- 
 voted to tobacco, until its hard, baked surface looked 
 discouraging. 
 
 They had no horse, but carried their provisions on 
 their backs seven miles up the mountain from Goodletts- 
 ville. They could bring one sack of cornmeal every trip; 
 and that, with water from their spring, made then* corn 
 pone. For the rest, they had been given some prunes, 
 and on prunes and corn bread they lived for some weeks. 
 
 But plowing time came. They borrowed a buckskin 
 mule, a turning plow, and a bull-tongue plow, and went 
 after their tobacco field. They went once around with 
 the turning plow, then unhitched, put the mule to the 
 bull-tongue, and made it a subsoiler in the furrow; 
 then they resinned the tinning plow, and repeated the 
 process. Thus they prepared their garden, in which 
 that year the tomatoes were the wonder of the land. 
 
 In April, Mrs. Ashton, who had now become inter- 
 ested in the work, and had furnished money for it, came 
 with her two other sons, Robert and Ralph, both city 
 young men, nurse and chauffeur, who had never felled 
 a tree nor worked on a farm. But in a short time they 
 had become woodsmen, plowmen, orchardists, goat- 
 herders, and bee-keepers. 
 
 In June Mr. Alden brought his wife to the place. 
 With gunnysacking, newspapers, and whitewash, they 
 made over the interior of the main log house, until it 
 appeared a mansion to many of their neighbors. In 
 July Mr. John Myers, who had been interested by Mr. 
 Mulford, came from Kansas, with his two mule teams, 
 and a carload of hay, corn, farming implements, and 
 household goods, giving the goods, his own time, and 
 the use of his teams for one year to the new school. 
 His arrival was to these new pilgrims like the coming of 
 the new shiploads of pioneers to aid and hearten the 
 
IELL VENTILATED BUT COLD -IN WINTER 
 
 'AND BUT LITTLE R.OOM FOQ- FODDER 
 
 A HANDSOME AND .ROOMY SUBSTITUTE 
 
 At Fountain Head School, Tennessee. 
 
 With good cheer, they are looking forward to the building of a new 
 barn and silo." Pages 185 and 173. 
 
The Out-School Movement 169 
 
 Mayflower men who first landed on the rocky, wooded 
 shores of New England. They thanked God and took 
 courage. 
 
 Their first source of income was from then: timber, 
 in which almost all their land lay. They cut that next 
 winter fifteen hundred feet of timber, had it milled, 
 and hauled it twenty miles to Nashville to sell. They 
 cut the best of their white oak into spoke timber, and 
 were able to boast, for the fifteen days they were at it, 
 the making of six dollars a day. Railway ties brought 
 fifty cents apiece. Thus, living simply and frugally, 
 and working hard, they made their living that first 
 year, and provided lumber for a new story-and-a-half 
 house. 
 
 Alden and Mulford went to the community as home- 
 seekers, saying nothing about the possible establishment 
 of a school. They worked with their hands and strug- 
 gled for a living like the rest of men; and though Alden 
 was a university man, he "was among them as one that 
 labored." But when his wife came, the community 
 quickly discovered that she was a teacher, because she 
 was teaching her young adopted brother. Whereupon 
 they came and asked, "Why can't you teach us a school?" 
 As this was the purpose for which the company had come, 
 they acceded to the request, and in the fall Mrs. Alden 
 began the school, a school which steadily grew until it 
 included seventy-five or eighty children, and required 
 three teachers. 
 
 All the workers, whether in the schoolroom or out, 
 are teachers. Thus Mrs. Ashton, who had run a bakery 
 in Pittsburg, soon after her arrival built an out-door 
 oven of rock and lime dust scraped from the roadbed, 
 and in this oven she baked such fine big brown loaves 
 of light bread as were the wonder and delight of house- 
 wives for miles about. No one hi that community could 
 make light bread, and in a short time Mrs. Ashton was 
 holding a free class in breadmaking, which was attended 
 by dozens; and thereafter corn pone and soda biscuits 
 
170 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 were not the only breads in the homes thereabouts. 
 
 There were calls also for help in accident and dis- 
 ease, and in all the various ways in which neighbors 
 may be of help to neighbors. Charley Ashton became 
 the community blacksmith, and every member of the 
 school family found his services hi requisition at one or 
 another duty. And as free as were the neighborly of- 
 fices, so free was instruction in books or in manual art, to 
 children and grown people alike. The school became, as 
 it was designed, a public institution as free as the tax-fed 
 government schools, but made so through the hard, 
 self-sacrificing labors of the promoters. 
 
 This was by no means an easy task, and while the 
 confidence and gratitude of the community was gradu- 
 ally being won, there was more than one episode that 
 threatened disaster to the little company in their un- 
 selfish mission. The people are open-hearted, frank, 
 and free, but they are too much isolated from the cen- 
 ters of jurisdiction to have forgotten the prime law 
 that 
 
 "He may take who has the might, 
 And he may keep who can." 
 
 A short tune after the establishment of the school, 
 they signalized their power by abolishing a toll-gate 
 which shut them from town, and was often employed in 
 making vexatious and injurious delays, while the toll 
 road was unworked and always in bad condition. Exas- 
 perated finally by the refusal of the keeper to let a boy 
 pass who was riding for the doctor, the men armed, 
 and at night, poking their rifles into the face of the sleep- 
 ing man, disarmed him and set him off for Nashville. 
 Three days later, the owner of the road came back with 
 an armed guard, swearing he would keep his gate against 
 the devil himself. But after a pitched battle, he was 
 glad for the speed of his blooded horse, for he was chased 
 by the angry victors to the very suburbs of the city. 
 
The Out-School Movement 171 
 
 The bullet-marked tollhouse still stands by the road- 
 side, but there is no gate. 
 
 Personal freedom, and as little statute law as pos- 
 sible, was the desire and experience of the rimlanders. 
 For one thing, while the county had a stock law, the land 
 in that community was used as free range, and the one 
 who wanted his crops protected must fence against 
 cattle and hogs. To do so unneighborly a thing as to 
 invoke the no-fence law, would be to make undying ene- 
 mies, as more than one feud testifies. 
 
 On the seven-hundred-acre tract out of which Alden 
 bought, one man pastured seventy-five head of swine. 
 Alden had too little fence to protect all his fields, and 
 what he had was rail fence. In his clearing by his new 
 house, the second year, he was raising a good garden, 
 which the hogs were not slow to find out. Those hogs 
 ate his cabbage, rooted out and crunched his potatoes, 
 and devoured his corn and stover. The two boys in the 
 family had their heels twinkling to keep them out, and 
 the dog barked till he was too hoarse to bark any more. 
 Alden was cutting hay on shares away from home, 
 to save an impossible bill for feed the next winter, and 
 he would come home too tired to stand up, only to hear 
 that those hogs had eaten up all his early potatoes. Says 
 he, "I sat down over there in the bushes and pondered 
 what I should do. The potatoes were our main depend- 
 ence, as they are now, and we were having a hard 
 time to live. I had appealed to the man to keep up his 
 hogs, but he would not; he complained that the country 
 was being spoiled it was no more a country for a poor 
 man when he could not let his stock run! I would not 
 use the law; it was not wise to do so; and it almost seemed 
 I should have to leave." But Alden is a direct descend- 
 ant of that John and Priscilla Alden in the Pilgrim com- 
 pany who " Brave hearts and true! not one went back 
 in the Mayflower." They held on, endured their losses, 
 and now, when the stock laws are observed, they have 
 
172 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 all but forgotten the episode of the hogs and the early 
 potatoes. 
 
 Mr. Mulford remained with the Oak Grove Garden 
 School for over a year, when, it appearing that there was 
 sufficient help to spare him, he married, and with his 
 brother-in-law, Forrest West, set out in search of an- 
 other needy community. Such a place they found some 
 twenty miles to the east. 
 
 In their search they had driven up into the hills 
 from Gallatin, examining a number of places, but no- 
 where finding what appealed to them. At a little sta- 
 tion the storekeeper from whom they bought their lunch 
 of crackers and peaches curiously inquired if they were 
 looking for land. "Yes," they told him, whereupon he 
 directed them to the westward, to a certain farm. They 
 turned in that direction, and after driving a mile or so 
 they came upon a man with his three boys chopping 
 wood. They asked him where his children went to school. 
 Nowhere, he said; never had gone. Could they read? 
 No; none of his six children could read, nor could he and 
 his wife. They drove on, and Mulford said to his com- 
 panion, " Forrest, we have struck the place. There's 
 a farm for us somewhere in here!" 
 
 And they found it; not the farm to which they had 
 been directed, but another of seventy-six acres, on top 
 of a bare clay hill which had been worked and over- 
 worked until the neighbors facetiously declared that no 
 one could raise even an umbrella on it. This "school 
 on the hill" has since become famed among the rural- 
 school people for the lessons of faith and courage and 
 persistence its members have written for others to see, 
 and for the leadership it has taken in the development 
 of plans and methods for the out-schools. Some of its 
 experiences are detailed in later chapters. 
 
 Mrs. West, the mother and mother-in-law of these 
 two men, later joined the company with her three daugh- 
 ters. Today, embowered by orchards, vineyards, and 
 the old oak grove, and almost overshadowed by the big 
 
The Out-School Movement 173 
 
 red barn and silo, three homes stand guarding the neat 
 schoolhouse and the grounds of the Fountain Head 
 School. The building of a small hydropathic home is 
 the latest accomplishment. 
 
 The history of these schools is typical of the experi- 
 ence of all those who have entered the out-school work. 
 At the annual convention held at Madison in 1915, 
 thirty-nine groups of self-supporting workers were re- 
 ported, all but five of which were established by Madi- 
 son students or those influenced to this work by the 
 Madison people. Thirty of these groups were con- 
 ducting schools, and all of them engage in some form 
 of Christian work for their neighborhoods. The greater 
 part of these groups are in Tennessee, Alabama, and 
 North Carolina, and in the mountains or piedmont. 
 
 These workers are not on salary, except in the case 
 of one school which receives county funds. They have 
 their own living to make from their farms and other 
 industries. Some have received help from relatives or 
 friends, and a few by general solicitation, but money so 
 raised has almost invariably been intended for and de- 
 voted to the providing of buildings or equipment, not 
 for living expenses. And with very few exceptions the 
 teachers receive no money tuition from their pupils; 
 for they hold that they are giving the gospel in a con- 
 crete way, and that it should be free as preaching. They 
 are not averse to receiving gifts for their support, but 
 they hold that if such gifts are not forthcoming, their 
 commission to teach the gospel leaves them no excuse 
 for neglecting this work. They must do it by some 
 means by hard work, simple living, self-sacrifice; and 
 where these do not suffice, by simple trust in Elijah's 
 God. 
 
 The record they have made, of establishing and main- 
 taining, with industrial and social features, thirty-three 
 schools, with an average school term of eight months 
 a year, and with an approximate enrolment of one thou- 
 sand pupils, at no cost to the state and none to the 
 
174 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 church except through a few individual gifts such a 
 record, it will be admitted, deserves no empty applause 
 merely, but active encouragement. And it gives point 
 to these commendatory words from Mrs. E. G. White: 
 
 "The school at Madison not only educates in a knowl- 
 edge of the Scriptures, but it gives a practical training 
 that fits the student to go forth as a self-supporting 
 missionary to the field to which he is called. In his stu- 
 dent days he is taught how to build simply and substan- 
 tially, how to cultivate the land, and care for the stock. 
 To this is added the knowledge of being able to treat 
 the sick and care for the injured. This training for medi- 
 cal missionary work is one of the grandest objects for 
 which any school can be established. There are many 
 suffering from disease and injury, who, when relieved 
 of pain, will be prepared to listen to the truth. Our 
 Saviour was a mighty healer. In his name there may be 
 many miracles wrought in the South and in other fields 
 through the instrumentality of the trained medical mis- 
 sionary. . . . 
 
 "It would have been pleasing to God if, while the 
 Madison School has been doing its work, other such 
 schools had been established in different parts of the 
 Southern field. No soul should be left in darkness if 
 by any possible means he can be enlightened. There 
 is plenty of land lying waste in the South that might 
 have been improved as the land about the Madison 
 School has been improved. . . . The time is soon 
 coming when God's people, because of persecution, 
 will be scattered in many countries. Those who have 
 received an all-round education will have the advantage 
 wherever they are. The Lord reveals divine wisdom in 
 thus leading his people to the training of all their facul- 
 ties and capabilities for the work of disseminating truth. 
 
 "Every possible means should be devised to estab- 
 lish schools on the Madison order in various parts of 
 the South; and those who lend their means and their 
 influence to help this work, are aiding the cause of God." 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 In the following sections the identity of persons and 
 places is usually disguised, a course born of the modesty 
 of some of the individuals and communities concerned. 
 The incidents related are true in every particular, and 
 have been selected with the purpose of giving some 
 glimpse into the work-a-day programs of the self-sup- 
 porting rural mission workers. 
 
"THE young man of the mountain, when once 
 educated, is so confident of himself, and so positive 
 of opinion, that he is admirably adapted to be a 
 leader." SAMUEL T. WILSON. 
 
XIV 
 
 ON AN OLD FRONTIER 
 
 IN THE days of Washington, the frontier of America 
 was the Appalachian Mountains. There the "Long 
 Knives" hunted and trapped, and there the early set- 
 tlers hewed out their fields from the forest, built their 
 log cabins with the ax alone, and found the necessaries 
 of life within the bounds of their little world. Today, 
 while the border has swept on across the great river 
 and the wide plains, beyond the crest of the Rockies 
 and to the very edge of the western ocean, much of the 
 Alleghanies and the Cumberlands remain in their con- 
 ditions almost as truly frontier as they were two hun- 
 dred years ago. And he who would go to minister to 
 the needs of the people there, as teacher, medical mis- 
 sionary, or social helper, may well discover that he is 
 to reproduce the hardy life his great-grandfather lived. 
 Especially is this true to the self-supporting and light- 
 purse worker who makes his post in the far interior. 
 Let us visit one of these stations far back in the 
 mountains of North Carolina. We alight from the train 
 at a little village huddled in one long street between 
 the gripping hands of the hills, with our journey as yet, 
 in point of time, only half completed. A week before 
 we have sent a letter on its circuitous way through Ten- 
 nessee and Georgia, asking our friends to meet us with 
 12 (177) 
 
178 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 a conveyance. This conveyance proves to consist of 
 two saddled mules, whose first back-woodsy exploit is 
 to take fright at an oncoming freight train and run 
 away with us half through the village. 
 
 With suit-cases strapped to the sides of our guide's 
 mule, we take our way out of the town, past a mill 
 site, and across the tumbling Tuckasegee, and set our 
 faces toward the mountains one of the highest ranges 
 of the Appalachians which bar our way to the school 
 domain. We are to "hit the trail/ 7 our guide informs 
 us, about six miles from town. He might have brought 
 us through by wagon, only that it takes twice as long 
 each way and is much more uncomfortable. The wagon 
 road winds around and in and out over the mountains 
 for twenty miles, with many wash-outs and much steep 
 grade. The trail shortens the distance to twelve miles, 
 but at the cost of taking some of it almost straight up 
 and down. From the county road, at a corner by a coun- 
 try store, we strike into a private road, which gives 
 way in time to a faint wood road, and that in turn to 
 the trail through the Gap. 
 
 If you think of a gap as a gateway, you will be greatly 
 mistaken. A gap is merely an aspiring mountain that 
 has failed to make good. It is lowly only in comparison 
 with its towering companions-at-arms. It gives you all 
 the thrills of mountain climbing, all the pulls and 
 wrenches, the puffings and perspirings, all the illusions 
 of early conquest and disappointments of unguessed 
 heights. The trail that lures you on your hazardous 
 way takes you over stony stretches and through oozy 
 wallows where the springs seep out, then upward past 
 deserted tanbark camps into a tangle of fallen logs and 
 briery glades, and last, upon a stairless ascent that makes 
 you certain you are on the roof of the world. Either, 
 like the mountaineer, you dismount and pull your mule 
 up by the reins, or you lie upright along his back and 
 pity him as, with heavings and sobs and grunts, he makes 
 his last successful scramble to the top of the Gap. 
 
On an Old Frontier 179 
 
 And there, under the great chestnut trees, we pause 
 for a breathing spell before attempting the equally ter- 
 rific descent. In two directions at least, the Gap gives 
 as good a view as the peak. We trace, winding and 
 diving and reappearing, the way we have come, back 
 to the railroad, and beyond, away, away, over seas of 
 ridges and knobs, to the sky-line of the distant Smokies. 
 
 But we turn with greater interest to the other side 
 of the Gap; for there, shut in by a great winding circle 
 of high mountains, is the kingdom whose heart, to us, 
 is the little mountain school. Down a certain narrow 
 valley little and shallow it looks from this height, 
 but sufficiently deep when viewed from within itself 
 we trace the road that leads to the school, hidden 
 beyond some wooded hills. And down we plunge to 
 the headsprings of the creek that leads us on our way 
 through Eden Valley. 
 
 Edenic is this valley, perhaps, in some respects: in 
 its isolation, the primitiveness of its life, and the dainty 
 charm of its springtime, from the early dawn of trailing 
 arbutus to the sunshine of rhododendron and wild rose. 
 But now! a drizzling rain that set in at the top of the 
 Gap has swathed us in folds of moisture and melan- 
 choly, and any memories of Eden that suggest them- 
 selves have reference to that last sad day when its gates 
 were shut upon a hapless pair. 
 
 Greater, then, the welcome when we draw rein be- 
 fore the home of our friends, and, drenched and cold, 
 stiffly lower ourselves from the saddles. Bareheaded, 
 radiant, Mr. Arthur stands out at the roadside to greet 
 us, and Mis' Margaret's rosy face is framed in the door- 
 way. Behind is a roaring fire in the rough stone fire- 
 place, and the once dark, low room is transformed with 
 paint and pictures to match the glow of love that has 
 come here into the mountains. 
 
 It is a rough little shack of a one-room house that 
 the teachers have adopted, but with a triple division 
 and the addition of a two-room lean-to, it serves with 
 
i8o The Men of the Mountains 
 
 distinction not only for their home but for the housing 
 also of three or four students from a distance. Some there 
 are who tramp daily six to eight miles, through sunshine 
 or rain, to and from the school, but others there are, 
 even from neighboring counties, who are begging for a 
 chance to come and live at the school. The triple di- 
 vision of the one-room cabin is a partial answer to the 
 plea. 
 
 Two of these students are to arrive this evening, 
 and they come an hour later, trudging through the mud 
 behind their " pappy" with his ox-sled that holds their 
 single box of necessaries and valuables. Shy to the 
 verge of terror they are, especially at having to meet two 
 "furriners" like ourselves; but their father, nothing 
 daunted, preserves an immobile face behind his bushy 
 whiskers, and proves himself in conversation a man of 
 information concerning those things wherein he should 
 be informed. 
 
 But soaked through they are, they all make light 
 of this tussle with the elements: " Hain't nothin' to 
 flurry over. We-alPs used to gettin' damp here in the 
 mountains." Nevertheless, Mis' Margaret has the girls 
 off for a change to dry clothing mostly borrowed 
 before we sit down to the smoking hot meal that has 
 postponed itself several hours for this occasion. 
 
 And then comes evening worship and a time of 
 singing around the piano. That piano is the wonder of 
 the valley, and well it deserves its fame, for it came the 
 twenty miles of rough roads over the mountains, with their 
 gullies and ruts and rocks and dips and tippings. It 
 was three weeks on the way, and in expenditure of time 
 and energy and muscle and nerve cost nearly as much 
 for its transportation as its original value. But it makes 
 liquid sunshine now when days are dark, not only for 
 the teacher who insisted on its coming, but for the mu- 
 sical soul of many a boy and girl who aspires to its mas- 
 tery. 
 
 The schoolhouse, up on the hill, asserts its superiority 
 
On an Old Frontier 181 
 
 over the home both in size and finish. It stands out in 
 its pride and paint to challenge the whole valley below, 
 and on such a bright morning as followed our rain the 
 whole valley responds. They come, these children, from 
 up and down the bottoms, and from out the hidden, 
 narrow coves, from off the hill and mountain sides, until 
 there is a muster of mountain forces that remind you 
 of the swift gatherings on Nolichucky and Watauga for 
 the foray against Oconostota or the thrust at Ferguson. 
 It is a muster, indeed, of forces to threaten a foe; 
 but not that foe. The British long ago ceased to be ene- 
 mies. The last remnant of the Cherokee nation this 
 side of the Mississippi now live secure upon their reserva- 
 tion but a few miles to the west. Here in the ancient 
 land of the Erati the muster is not for bloody combat, 
 but for warfare against a more insidious and more dread- 
 ful foe, ignorance. And is there any one who, beholding 
 these lads and lassies gathered here, in checked shirt 
 and butternut jeans and coarse brogans, in poke bonnet 
 and blue and pink prints, who would deny them as 
 brave spirits, as lofty aims, as deep and willing sacrifice 
 in the cause they have espoused, as any of their fathers 
 in the times of war? They fight a daily battle against 
 poverty and narrowness and a sodden inertia that is 
 more than prejudice; they fight this battle with a cheer 
 and determination that is worthy of its higher use. 
 With their forefathers they share the log home, the hol- 
 lowed spring, the ox-team, the corn pone and side-meat. 
 They share with them almost equally the homespun 
 and the lack of books, the skill with loom and rifle and 
 ax, and the drab monotony of an isolated life. And when 
 they muster here at the rendezvous of the schoolhouse, 
 there is promise in their courage for a deliverance, 
 not of necessity from all their primitive physical con- 
 ditions often of more value than ill but from the 
 bondage of an ill-instructed and depressing life. Their 
 mud-soaked shoes, for all the service of the door mat, 
 may trace their progress across the white floor of the 
 
1 82 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 schoolroom, but their eyes are lifted to the inspiration 
 of the walls, bright with print and map and lithograph 
 and sloyd design, bright, too, with the undying bril- 
 liance of the mottoes shining there: "I will lift up 
 mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help," 
 and "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet 
 of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace." 
 And their resolve can be read in their faces, to get that 
 help, to be that messenger. 
 
 Out upon the grounds in the afternoon we see another 
 phase of their training. The older boys have gone to 
 the building of the barn and the pruning of the grapes; 
 some of the girls are in the sewing class. But up here in 
 the grove the younger boys are at work with a teacher 
 clearing underbrush. Axes and mattocks are getting out 
 the dead logs, the saplings, and the bushes. But the 
 chief center of attraction is a yearling the boys have 
 been given to break in. We who know nothing about the 
 breaking in of "cattle" must exhibit an innocent faith 
 that these sons of ox-teamsters are doing the proper 
 thing. At any rate, they are going at it with a zest 
 that betokens enjoyment. The stubborn little steer is 
 geed and hawed and whoaed, with pushes and pulls 
 that are meant to teach him these English words; and 
 though he takes it into his little bull head often to cut 
 counter to directions, he and they succeed in time in 
 getting a goodly pile of poles and stumps and brush 
 together for the burning. The boys declare him "break- 
 ing fine." Perhaps he will never come to yoke service 
 upon the school farm; for he is an anachronism along- 
 side the mule teams, but he may soon be under the eye 
 of one of these boys or their brothers, drawing saw- 
 logs down to the mill below. He is not out of date in 
 the valley. 
 
 Of commerce there is little. An easier route there 
 is to the outside world, through a railroad that runs 
 down into Georgia, but its high rates little encourage 
 exchange, and only the commoner necessities are much 
 
On an Old Frontier 183 
 
 indulged in at the country stores. The self-sufficient 
 resourcefulness of the pioneer yet lingers here, from 
 wooden pegs and sunbonnets to grist mills and primitive 
 forges. The school and its teachers must perforce par- 
 take of much of the same conditions. It is not their 
 purpose to revamp this society into an imitation of the 
 " foreign' 7 brand. There are, of course, such influences 
 at work, through men who go out and come in; but 
 to the Christian teacher the simplicity, the hospitality, 
 the frugality, even the slower movement of the commu- 
 nity life, all these are a precious heritage in this day of 
 pretension, waste, and rush. The learning for mind and 
 hand which they bring is to make helpers, not imita- 
 tors. They curtail, then, their needs and bind about 
 their wants and wishes, supplying themselves, so far as 
 possible, from the products of the farm, and emulating 
 their people in small expenditures. One of the teachers 
 said that a friend sent her a dollar eight months before, 
 which has been her sole funds for that time, and which 
 still remains intact. In sharing of burdens, alliance of 
 interests, seeing and striving for ideals, they make them- 
 selves, not the beckoners, but the leaders, of their peo- 
 ple. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Not so different in externals, and yet with its own 
 characteristics, is the elevated table-land in Alabama 
 on which some of our schools are established. Its pre- 
 cipitous sides make it a very isolated region. Some of 
 those who live on its rolling top have never been off 
 the mountain. The soil is in some places good, and 
 in others exceedingly poor. The most of the surface 
 is wooded, but the little farms in the several settlements 
 or away out in the clearings have all the characteris- 
 tics of the properties of our great-grandfathers in this 
 new West. Ox-teams and "jinnys" far outnumber the 
 horses and mules as work-stock. 
 
 The second of our schools to be established on this 
 mountain is the one we now will visit. We find our- 
 
1 84 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 selves near a famous locality in the valley whence we 
 start to climb. Here along the Tennessee dwelt the 
 Chickamaugas in the days of old, and not a mile from 
 where our feet stand upon the station platform is their 
 most noted stronghold, Nickojack Cave. Into this 
 cave the Indians used to retreat when hard pressed, 
 carrying with them as much as possible of their goods 
 and plunder. As it winds and twists under the mountain 
 to an unknown distance, no pursuing party was ever 
 able to dislodge the fugitive redman once he had made 
 his escape into the cave. 
 
 Up the mountainside for two miles to the top, and 
 then on for an equal distance, we make our way to the 
 school and farm of Brother Walter and his wife, Sister 
 Dora. Now you are introduced, hi this farm of Brother 
 Walter's, to a reason for the "jinnys." Its land was 
 simply too poor to support a team of horses or mules, and 
 so he bought for eighty-five dollars a team of unusually 
 big " jinnys," with double harness. Mr. Walter's land, a 
 thin, sandy soil, would grow, as he discovered, no more 
 than five bushels of corn per acre. A horse would eat 
 that in half as many months, whether working or idle, 
 but a "jinny" will do with an ear at a feeding, and when 
 not working will subsist quite luxuriously upon the 
 leaves and the scanty grass in the forest range. With his 
 "jinny" team Mr. Walter hauled railway ties, four or 
 five at a load, down the mountain to the railroad. Two 
 loads a day brought him one dollar, and the "jinnys" 
 would not take more than ten cents of that. With his 
 "jinnys," too, he plowed his land, and hauled forest 
 leaves for fertilizer. 
 
 Mr. Walter has one hundred sixty acres, twenty- 
 seven of which once were cleared, but having grown up 
 in brush have to be cleared over again. A stiff yellow 
 clay underlies his sandy top soil of two or three inches' 
 depth. Deep plowing the first year would mean no 
 crop, and he had only begun the process of plowing 
 deeper, inch by inch, turning under humus in the form 
 
On an Old Frontier 185 
 
 of leaves, for of course he had almost no stable manure, 
 his two cows having also to browse and graze in the for- 
 est. 
 
 At the moment we come upon them, Mis 7 Dora 
 and her mother are picking over strawberries for dinner. 
 
 "What beautiful wild berries you find here!" is our 
 exclamation. 
 
 "Wild!" is the indignant response, "those are our 
 finest garden product." And indeed we find, though 
 they have the best of plant stock, and though they have 
 fertilized with pine needles, the product is little more 
 than equal to the wild berries. And the wild black- 
 berries which are everywhere so abundant can surpass 
 all their garden might attempt. More than that, there 
 are escaped apple trees in abandoned clearings and in 
 the midst of the forest, that furnish no inconsiderable 
 crop, as we learn later at a convention, when Mis' 
 Dora reports that her husband has remained at home 
 to gather such a harvest. 
 
 More cheerful, happy, earnest workers could not be 
 found in palaces. Their palace is an ancient, ramshackle 
 house whose leaky roof, though often patched, must in 
 times of rain be supplemented by many pans upon the 
 floor, to keep the soil beneath from being washed away. 
 But they have built a new schoolhouse for the school, 
 which, begun the first year, must be housed in a proper 
 place; and there is a tiny cottage also for Mis 7 Dora's 
 mother. With good cheer they are looking forward to 
 the building of a new house for themselves next year, 
 when Mr. Walter's father expects to move down from 
 Iowa. And while no tuition is charged they are not un- 
 remembered nor wholly unrequited by the people to 
 whom they are giving their lives. A mother brought 
 them a present of her handiwork, a beautiful pattern 
 quilt, and when they expressed their appreciation 
 "Well," said she, "we think a heap more of the educa- 
 tion you are giving our children than you can think of 
 the quilt." 
 
1 86 
 
 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 These schools and their teachers are by no means 
 exceptions hi the matter of their poverty, self-denial, 
 and courage. They are the rule, and incidents innumer- 
 able might be mentioned of workers living on insufficient 
 food for months, of enduring cold in thin clothing and 
 thin walls, of cheerfully facing privations, and anxiously 
 scanning means for meeting obligations; and all this 
 not for a short time only, but as an experience of years. 
 And this they do, not to gain some great end for them- 
 selves, but that the poor, the ignorant, and the help- 
 less shall have the blessings of education, health, and 
 salvation. 
 
XV 
 BEHIND THE BACK OF MAMMON 
 
 MAMMON, the god of riches, turns his back upon 
 these self-supporting rural-school workers. If they 
 were seeking his face, they would not enter this kind 
 of work. They have cast their all of time, and strength, 
 and money, at the feet of their Lord Jesus, to be used 
 in carrying the truth and power of an applied gospel 
 to those who sorely need it. Often their time seems 
 insufficient for their many duties and burdens; some- 
 times their strength, physical and mental, is exhausted; 
 and as for money always their station is behind the 
 back of Mammon. This is not a complaint, it is a re- 
 joicing: " approving ourselves as the ministers of God 
 . . . alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; 
 as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." "There- 
 fore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in ne- 
 cessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: 
 for when I am weak, then I am strong." This is the 
 Christian's attitude; and the Christian who devotes 
 his all to his Master's use is in the way of being a self- 
 supporting worker, who is always a supporter of others. 
 He finds, too, that the Lord who said, "Seek ye first 
 the kingdom of God, . . . and all these things 
 shall be added unto you," is a better provider than 
 Mammon. 
 
 One night in the late nineties, a young man in the 
 
 (187) 
 
1 88 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 mountains of North Carolina went out to think under 
 the stars. For seven years he and his wife had devoted 
 all their time, strength, and money to a work in the 
 mountains. Now he stared up at the charred remains 
 of a fire-swept building on the hill that had held his all. 
 Their few thousands were gone; they were penniless. 
 Within then- temporary shelter lay dying the young 
 woman who had seemed the most precious fruits of their 
 labors in the mountains. In that hour of depression 
 he could see no results of their sacrifice, and an over- 
 powering impulse came upon him to leave the work of 
 the mountains. But then there came to him the ex- 
 perience and the words of Job. His property had been 
 swept away, his sons and daughters slain, his own body 
 tortured with pain. Yet "in all this Job sinned not, 
 nor charged God foolishly"; for he said, "The Lord 
 gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name 
 of the Lord." 
 
 Not yet, reflected young Marshall, had he given 
 his life nor even his health, and so long as these remained 
 there could be no excuse for desertion. There he regis- 
 tered a vow that with the blessing of health, come what 
 might, he would never desert his post. 
 
 Soon after, he had a vivid dream of a place which 
 it seemed he had purchased, with an old log house, 
 gnarled old apple trees, and a tangle of weeds and bri- 
 ers. As he looked off to the right, he saw a man coming 
 through the ruinous place, whose glances seemed to dis- 
 close more plainly every unkempt spot. This man be- 
 gan directing him to prune the trees, to clear away the 
 debris, and to lay out a lawn. And the impression came 
 to him that this was to be his future place of work. 
 
 Within a few days, while he was pondering this dream, 
 he was made trustee of certain moneys, which he loaned 
 on good security for his wards, while he began carpentry 
 work for a living. But soon one man to whom he had 
 loaned money, came into difficulties, and proposed to 
 turn in his farm for his debt and a further loan. Advised 
 
Behind the Back of Mammon 189 
 
 by his bondsmen, Marshall accepted the proposition, 
 and so came into possession, in trust, of just such a farm 
 as he had seen in his dream. Through later develop- 
 ments, this property became devoted to the school work 
 hi which Marshall was interested. 
 
 With his wife and his two aunts he moved into the 
 log house, planning to make it, as soon as possible, 
 more than a home for themselves. He had long had in 
 mind a work for orphans and aged people, and though 
 having no prospects for such a work, he now planned for 
 it. To provide light farm work for old and young, he 
 set out fruit and began on the old worn-out, sterile land 
 to prepare garden ground. 
 
 Another man who had been connected with him, 
 a physician, moved into a near-by log cabin, and joined 
 him in Christian help work among their neighbors. 
 It was a rough and lawless district, where more than 
 one man held his own by right of pistol, and where 
 " woods-colts/ ' as children of unknown paternity were 
 called, were nearly as numerous as the legitimate. There 
 was no school in the community, and when fall came, the 
 question occurred to these two men, " Shall we try to 
 build us better houses now, or build a meeting-house 
 and schoolhouse first?" They decided that the work 
 of the Lord should come first. But they had no money 
 with which to begin. However, said Marshall to Doctor 
 Ed, "We have one thing; that is, a place to build: that 
 nice little wooded knoll on the corner of my land." 
 
 Monday morning they went over to the spot with 
 their axes. They knelt down and prayed that God would 
 bless the enterprise they were about to begin. And then 
 they fell to with their axes. Not a ray of light had they 
 as to how they could build a schoolhouse, but at least 
 they were providing the firewood to burn in it. 
 
 About ten o'clock a scheme struck Marshall's mind, 
 and he said to his companion: "Doctor, there's a barn 
 up in the woods half a mile away which I believe we can 
 buy cheap." They shouldered their axes and went 
 
190 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 over to look at it, and they found it a 20 x 29 foot struc- 
 ture, framed up like a house, twelve feet high, and with 
 a lean-to at least five thousand feet of lumber in it. 
 
 That afternoon Marshall went to see the owner, 
 who asked eighteen dollars for the barn. "Is that too 
 much?" he said. 
 
 "No," replied the teacher, "it's a bargain at eighteen 
 dollars; but as I'm getting donations, I'm going to ask 
 you for a gift of three dollars. Let us have the barn 
 for fifteen dollars." 
 
 "All right," said the man. And Marshall walked 
 away with his bargain in his head and not a dollar in his 
 pocket. 
 
 Mrs. Doctor Ed had fifteen dollars which her mother 
 had just sent her for clothing and other needed articles. 
 She gave this to buy the barn. By Tuesday night the 
 barn lumber was all piled up on the school grounds, 
 with every old nail carefully pulled out and saved up 
 for rebuilding. A man in the neighborhood gave fifty 
 dollars, and others gave their labor, while Marshall 
 and the Doctor put in every cent they could get. So 
 the little schoolhouse was built at a cost of one hundred 
 twenty-five dollars, with a valuation twice that. A 
 Sabbath school in Ohio raised twenty-two dollars to 
 pay for the twenty-four seats, made hi the shops of an- 
 other school in the next county. A teacher was ob- 
 tained, and thus the school began. 
 
 In 1914 it had an average attendance of fifty to 
 sixty children, most of whom had previously had little 
 or no school advantages; and a church of devoted men, 
 women, and young people had been raised up to hold a 
 light in that corner of the wilderness. 
 
 Two years after the building of the schoolhouse, 
 Marshall felt more strongly impressed to build a home 
 for old people, and he told the Lord that though he had 
 all on his hands it seemed he could do, yet if a thousand 
 dollars should be placed in his hands without his seek- 
 ing it, he would build that home. 
 
Behind the Back of Mammon 191 
 
 A month or two later, one of his uncles came South, 
 and very soon asked his nephew if a thousand dollars 
 would help him in any way. 
 
 "Yes," said Marshall, "that will answer the test 
 I have made as to whether I should build a home for the 
 aged." 
 
 Later his uncle added more, and a house of fifteen 
 rooms was erected in which orphan children and a 
 number of old people lived with Mr. Marshall's family. 
 They were supported food, clothing, and other neces- 
 saries by the farm, on which they raised as money 
 crops, fruit, peanuts, Irish potatoes, a little cotton, 
 and dairy products. By various providences the insti- 
 tution accumulated a property worth five thousand 
 dollars, and did a work incalculable in value. Some- 
 times the fare was meager, always the work pressed hard, 
 often financial crises came to test the faith of the work- 
 ers, but repeatedly the providence of God opened the 
 way to success. 
 
 A young man who had been under the training of 
 the Madison teachers in the North gave his life to the 
 Southern work. He and his bride spent their honey- 
 moon in driving from Michigan to Tennessee, with an 
 old white horse his father gave them, and with a binder 
 canvass for a tent. 
 
 They bought a place of one hundred twenty-five 
 acres, three miles from the railroad, for twelve hundred 
 dollars, partly on time, planning to make of it a stock 
 farm. The larger part was old, worn land. There was 
 an old log house on the place, so leaky that the flour 
 barrel had to have one special corner, and so drafty 
 that a dozen thicknesses of newspapers on the wall 
 could not shut out the cold. At first, however, they had 
 not the benefit of this house, but only of a 6 x 10 shed, 
 for the previous owners stayed some weeks. When in 
 the fall they did get into the log house, they felt it un- 
 inhabitable during the winter, and so put up a shack 
 board house which was to serve until they could erect 
 
192 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 a better home, as they hoped, the following year. With 
 his last hundred dollars young St. John bought another 
 horse. Then came a series of misfortunes. 
 
 First one horse died, then the other. Then, while he 
 was away, the shack home caught fire and burned with 
 practically everything in it. He was left without any 
 chance at all to succeed on the farm, but he called on no 
 one for gifts. He gathered together a little lumber, 
 and put up the shell of a new house, and into it they 
 moved. Here he left his wife with a young girl, while 
 he went to the city, fifteen miles away, to work all winter 
 at carpentry; his young wife, a city-bred girl, stayed 
 on the farm to look after the chickens and the cows, 
 and to rescue the young lambs from the sleety weather 
 in the early spring. Every other Sabbath St. John 
 would try to be at home, and once his wife came to 
 stay with him a few days in the city. With this respite, 
 she pluckily held the fort through the winter, until her 
 husband could come back with enough money to add a 
 little more to the unfinished house, and to put up eighty 
 rods of wire fence, and to buy another team on part pay- 
 ment. 
 
 Then he alternated days of plowing and sowing 
 with weeks of work on houses and barns in the neigh- 
 borhood, by which means he earned enough to keep alive, 
 to pay up for his team, and to lay the foundations for 
 a new barn. 
 
 Meanwhile these young people mingled with and 
 helped their neighbors. They nursed the sick, taught 
 in the Sunday schools, and scattered much devotional 
 and health literature. They injected energy into the 
 young people with singing and good literature and 
 friendly visits and club work. While not in school 
 work, since there is a good school within half a mile, 
 they are an element of energy and cheer that is leaven- 
 ing the whole lump. 
 
 Though the majority of the schools have received 
 little money to aid them, there is one form of help which 
 
Behind the Back of Mammon 193 
 
 the most of them are glad to have the opportunity of 
 sharing with their neighbors. And that is the barrels 
 of second-hand clothing which some of their friends 
 are so kind as to ship. There is probably not one of the 
 groups of these workers who do not daily see, especially 
 in the winter, opportunity for distributing such charity. 
 And there are few of them whose teachers and children 
 are not often glad to avail themselves of the benefits 
 of these " imported goods, " as they have come to be 
 known among the self-supporters. It is seldom that this 
 practise 'will involve the embarrassment born of the fol- 
 lowing incident. 
 
 The Shamrock School had several young boarding 
 students from the North, members of a wealthy family, 
 who had first come to Madison, and had been sent on 
 as too immature for that school. One week two or three 
 barrels were received from the North, and part of the 
 contents were distributed among the needy neighbors. 
 It happened, however, that none were just then more 
 needy than the teachers, and they were very thankful 
 to get these " imported goods." 
 
 Sabbath evening they all appeared in "new" gar- 
 ments, some of which were better than they would ever 
 have been able to buy. After worship, as they gathered 
 around the organ for a song service, one of the boys 
 seemed greatly attracted by the light gray suit worn by 
 Mr. Ore. His attention became so fixed that the rest 
 noticed it, when the youngster explained: " Seems to me 
 I've seen that suit before!" No doubt he had: the bar- 
 rel had come from his father's house. Mr. Ore naturally 
 felt a little embarrassment, but the incident was passed 
 off with a general laugh and the exhibition of the new 
 clothes of the others. 
 
 The experience is not all laughter, however; for one 
 of the above heroes testifies, "I have shed more tears 
 over not being able to get the things for my own family 
 which I felt they should have, than over anything else 
 in our experience," a feeling that will be most fully ap- 
 13 
 
194 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 predated by the father who has a developing daughter 
 in her 'teens. 
 
 When Brother Josephus' Agricultural and Mechan- 
 ical Academy was in its beginning, the shop work, on 
 which he was placing his main dependence for support, 
 was at times very light, and again and again his family, 
 including his own children and a number of boarding 
 students, had cause to feel like the widow of Zarephath 
 when she was " gathering two sticks," to go in and dress 
 the handful of meal and the drop of oil, "that we may 
 eat it and die." 
 
 In one such experience, when he had used his last 
 dollar and was getting no shop work, his oldest daughter, 
 who had grown into young womanhood wearing "im- 
 ported goods," and now was destitute even of those, 
 came to him with her maiden's hurt pride at shabbiness. 
 
 "Jonnie," he said to her, "we are not here for our 
 own glory, nor to make money. We came here willing 
 to sacrifice. We are having a hard time. I wish you 
 might have these things you need, but what we are do- 
 ing without we are doing without for Christ's sake. 
 The Lord will send them." 
 
 But her patience and faith, spread out over many 
 years, suffered a momentary lapse. "Oh, yes," she re- 
 sponded, "that's what you always say: 'Just trust in 
 the Lord!' " And with tears she went away. 
 
 Brother Josephus went by himself and prayed. 
 That night, when the mail came, there was a letter from 
 a man whom he had never seen, had not solicited, and 
 had not even written to for a very long time. In the 
 letter was a check for one hundred dollars, the sender 
 saying that he was impressed Brother Josephus needed 
 it. The father handed the check to his daughter, say- 
 ing, "I think you can have that dress now." And again 
 she cried, but with a different cause for tears. 
 
 One of the two or three schools which have received 
 some little financial aid from the general public is the 
 Chinkapin Ridge School. Its founders were two families 
 
Behind the Back of Mammon 195 
 
 from California, Bruce and Lamont. Bruce was a me- 
 chanic. Lamont, who had been before his conversion 
 a commercial traveler, and after that an accountant, 
 and whose family in the old days could not live on less 
 than three thousand dollars a year, came here to make 
 a living on a washed and gullied farm, where he scarcely 
 sees one hundred dollars in money through the year. 
 Said he, "We used to be interested, years ago, in send- 
 ing barrels of clothing into the South through our church; 
 we never thought then that we would some time be the 
 beneficiaries of them." 
 
 They moved into a log house one hundred years 
 old, to which they made an addition of two or three 
 rooms. The puncheon floor was full of holes; the attic, 
 where they slept on a straw tick the first three months, 
 was open enough to let three inches of snow drift upon 
 their bed in a February snow storm. But they opened 
 their school in their big cabin living-room, with its 
 puncheon floor, their own children making the nucleus 
 of a group that finally required a schoolhouse. 
 
 In the spring of 1912, Mrs. Lamont went back East 
 to get help in building their schoolhouse. With much 
 effort and no little difficulty she secured the interest 
 and help of a number of friends, who gave or pledged 
 nearly five hundred dollars for the purpose. The school- 
 house was going up in excellent form, when one night 
 that winter, as they were away attending a prayer-meet- 
 ing in the neighborhood, their old log house caught 
 fire and burned, with absolutely everything in it. They 
 had nothing left but the clothes on their back. It seemed 
 a hard blow, for they had not a dish nor so much as a 
 handkerchief left. But it brought forth a showing of 
 sympathy and appreciation from the community at 
 which they were surprised, having been received, when 
 they came three years before, with open and sometimes 
 hostile suspicion. One neighbor woman brought a pair 
 of sheets, with apologies for their poor quality; another 
 furnished two plates, another some steel knives and 
 
196 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 forks; and every one was ready with expression of sym- 
 pathy in word and deed. The men came together in a 
 bee and finished up the schoolhouse so that the family 
 could move into it and live. And then from friends 
 farther away came other manifestations of love and in- 
 terest, until, with a new and beautiful little home and 
 a better equipment than they had dreamed of getting, 
 the Laments were bound to declare that, like Job, then- 
 latter end was more blessed than their beginning. 
 
 The life of self-denying devotion to the good of others 
 is one to be sought, not shunned. In the first place, 
 it disciplines and strengthens the powers of mind and 
 soul to meet the problems which are inseparable from the 
 cause of God. In the second place, while the life must 
 always be one of sacrifice and self-denial, there is an 
 unexcelled satisfaction in the experience of service to 
 others, which finds an echo in the appreciation it gains 
 from the friends of God near by and far away. It pays, 
 from a double standpoint, to stay behind the back of 
 Mammon. 
 
XVI 
 PREACHING BY HAND 
 
 GO YE into all the world, and preach the gospel to 
 every creature," was the great commission given 
 by Christ to his apostles. And down through the ages 
 has come sounding the message to ourselves. But 
 with it have come the commentations of two millenni- 
 ums, to the effect that this preaching is to be done by 
 word of mouth. Yet Jesus' own comments and his ex- 
 ample signify more. He himself always prefaced his 
 preaching with his practise. He laid hands on the sick 
 and they recovered; he gave bread to the hungry, cloth- 
 ing to the naked, deliverance to the bound. He gave 
 far more time to healing than to talking, and out of his 
 own scanty store of money he relieved the necessities 
 of the poor. 
 
 To his disciples, then, when he bade them preach the 
 gospel, he conveyed such an idea of preaching as they 
 had witnessed in himself: not only to speak words of 
 grace, to teach the ignorant, but to minister to the phys- 
 ical needs of men. Especially does he bid them to heal 
 the sick. And when he comes in his kingdom, his test 
 of loyalty is whether those before him have fed the 
 hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and in prison; 
 for inasmuch as they have done this unto the least of 
 men, even so, he declares, have they done it unto their 
 King. 
 
 (i97) 
 
198 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Now the feeding of the hungry may mean more 
 than giving a meal to a tramp. If the Christian worker 
 teaches his neighbor how to make a more abundant 
 and nourishing dietary from his own garden and fields, 
 is he not intelligently feeding the hungry? If he is able, 
 through the industrial training of his pupils, to increase 
 their cash income from ten dollars to two or three hun- 
 dred dollars a year, is he not clothing the naked? If 
 he teaches the community by example and personal 
 help to build better houses for their increased comfort 
 and sanitation, is he not taking the stranger into shelter? 
 always understanding that his motive is not selfish 
 gain, but desire to help his fellow-men. Not that the 
 idea of personal benevolence is taken away from the 
 text, but it is meant to include that and more; it is ex- 
 tended as Christ certainly meant it to extend, to em- 
 brace all the processes of life within a Christian motive 
 and to Christian ends. So we may see many men and 
 women who will never thrill audiences with their elo- 
 quence in the pulpit, we may see mechanics and farmers 
 and nurses who are by their labors coworkers with 
 evangelists in the fulfilment of the great commission 
 preaching, not by tongue, but by hand. 
 
 Up in the rimlands more than a Sabbath-day 's 
 journey from Nashville, lies the happy and somnolent 
 land of Beulah. Here in 1909 came from the Madison 
 School the two brothers Carlson, with their wives. They 
 came without much else, for the expense of getting an 
 education had stripped them of their small savings, 
 and they had neither money nor equipment. 
 
 They had been saw-mill men, however, and in this 
 wooded country they believed they might catch a toe- 
 hold, and be of some use to the community while doing 
 it. They obtained a few acres of wooded ground, a 
 steep ravine that was of no use to any one else, and by 
 some means managed to supply themselves with a small 
 saw-mill. They cleared their own land, sawing up the 
 timber, and also doing custom work for the people about. 
 
Preaching by Hand 199 
 
 Poverty trod hard on their heels in those days, but 
 they had an ideal, and they held to it. Their earliest 
 home was a shack built of slabs, in no way better, in 
 many ways worse, than the homes of the people about 
 them; but it furnished them shelter, and more than that, 
 an inspiration. They would yet produce from this 
 scant beginning a worthy temple of Christian living. 
 
 They sold the best of their lumber, and with the 
 third grade they built first a schoolhouse, and after that 
 a cottage for themselves, which, neat and handsome in 
 style and finish, quickly became models that were copied 
 up and down the ridge. Then the Carlson brothers 
 turned over the property to a family of teachers and 
 moved fifty miles away to another community where 
 a school was just being established. Here they set up 
 their mill in a country in which are extensive forests 
 of hardwood, and developed a large business. They 
 prospered until they had a plant worth two thousand 
 dollars, with a twenty-five horsepower engine, saws, 
 planing and siding machines, and a dry kiln. 
 
 Upstairs at one end of their mill is a pretty com- 
 plete little repair shop. Ingenious and capable work- 
 men, they do all then 1 own repairing, making their own 
 planer bits and other parts of the machinery. In con- 
 sequence they have almost no loss in wear and tear of 
 machinery. 
 
 In the winter of 1913 their plant was burned with 
 almost total loss, but they rebuilt and stayed at then- 
 post. The results of their work are seen all through 
 the country about them. Very neat houses were built 
 at the school by themselves and their coworkers, which 
 proved patterns in architecture and finish to the whole 
 community. Having a grist mill as well as saw-mill, 
 they were visited by scores of customers from the vi- 
 cinity, who took away not merely then 1 grist less its 
 toll, but a thousand good ideas without toll except the 
 satisfaction these workers have in seeing the blessing 
 and improvement of their neighbors. 
 
2OO The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Shortly after the establishment of one of the early 
 schools, three of its workers were one day going along 
 the road near their home when they found an old man 
 lying unconscious by the roadside. At first they thought 
 him drunk, but upon examination found he was not. 
 They carried him to their cabin and revived him. He 
 was an old man whose mind had become enfeebled. 
 He lived hi the neighborhood with his married daughter, 
 but it was almost beyond any one's power to care prop- 
 erly for him, as he was incompetent to attend to or even 
 to make known his most common wants. That day he 
 had started out, unknown to any one, to go to another 
 house in the vicinity, but had fallen with a stroke of 
 paralysis. 
 
 The young men cared for him in their own home for 
 several days, until he died. This, almost their first ex- 
 perience in the neighborhood, gave them the reputation 
 of good Samaritans, and they were at once looked to as 
 persons to whom to turn in time of need. 
 
 Not long after, as one of these young men, Winthrop, 
 was logging in the woods near the road, a man came 
 running to him, crying that his child was choking to 
 death. When he described the symptoms, Winthrop 
 pronounced it a case of worms. 
 
 "If there's anything you can do," pleaded the father, 
 "please come down at once." 
 
 "I'll go," said Winthrop, and ran to the house to 
 get some worm medicine and castor oil. With one of 
 the ladies of his household he went to the home of the 
 child, and soon gave her relief. When he returned to 
 the place where he had left the father helplessly crying, 
 he found that the man had taken up his work, and, 
 says Winthrop, "He had hauled more logs than a com- 
 pany ordinarily would have hauled in that time. He 
 had been a little bit off with us, too, but he never was 
 after that." 
 
 Somewhat later still, as Winthrop was hoeing in his 
 new strawberry bed, a little girl came running up the 
 
Preaching by Hand 201 
 
 road, crying to him, " Father is bleeding to death." He 
 had cut his foot, she said, with the ax. Mr. Winthrop 
 got some antiseptic cotton, disinfectant, and bandages, 
 and started on the run down to the man's house. He 
 found him standing up helplessly in the middle of the 
 floor, the blood running out into a great pool. Winthrop 
 had him sit down and put his foot up on a chair, cut off 
 his shoe, stopped the flow of blood, and washed and dis- 
 infected the wound. Then he covered it with carbolized 
 vaseline and cotton, which he bound on with adhesive 
 plaster, and bandaged the foot. But, fearing that the 
 bone might have been cut, he urged the man to send to 
 town for the doctor. When the physician came, he took 
 the bandages off, looked at the wound, and pronounced 
 it all right. Then he said, "That fellow has done it up 
 in better shape than I have the appliances to do it with. 
 I wish you would go down and get some more cotton 
 and plaster from him." 
 
 Another man in the neighborhood broke his leg one 
 spring, and Winthrop and Emmet and the boys went 
 down and offered to put in his crop for him. The old 
 man was a little offish. He was evidently afraid he 
 would be running a big bill. But he had no one who 
 could do it for him, and as they pleasantly insisted, 
 he let them go ahead. It was well into the summer be- 
 fore he was able to do much, and they not only put in 
 his crop, but regularly tended it until that time. Then, 
 when he thought he could manage it himself, he asked 
 for their bill. They told him they were not doing it 
 for money, but because he was their neighbor and needed 
 help, and that their bill was just nothing. 
 
 He gave them his thanks; but he more plainly showed 
 his gratitude later, in a characteristic way. He was 
 one of the most influential men in the community, a 
 type of the old clan leader of Scotland transplanted 
 into America. Some weeks after he had gotten 
 around with his mended leg, there came up into the 
 community a deputy sheriff who was hungering for some 
 
202 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 ready cash. The Sunday law in Tennessee provides 
 that a reward be given to the informer against any one 
 convicted of Sunday labor. This deputy had heard that 
 the school men were not Sunday-keepers, and might 
 very likely be found working on Sunday. Now Sun- 
 days are largely employed by the workers at this school, 
 as at most of the others, in Sunday school work, visit- 
 ing the sick, distributing literature, etc. But it is true 
 that they sometim.es attended on Sunday to farm work 
 which was pressing, though avoiding it as much as pos- 
 sible, and always working out of sight and hearing. 
 The deputy, not being well acquainted with the neigh- 
 borhood, thought he might employ this old man in 
 his search, and so he came to him and proposed to di- 
 vide the reward with him if he would pilot him where 
 he could see the school men at work on Sunday. 
 
 The old man eyed him until he had finished his pro- 
 posal, and then, saying not a word, he stepped back 
 within his door and took down his rifle from the pegs 
 above. Then, as he expressed it, he " looked into the 
 eyes of him and spake into the teeth of him/' saying, 
 "Them boys are true men. They've worked for us here. 
 And all I've got to say to you is, Git!" The fellow got, 
 and has never been back. 
 
 This incident is of value not as showing how Chris- 
 tian service may be repaid by protection, for that is the 
 last thing of which the Christian worker thinks; but it 
 shows what bonds of sympathy are created by Chris- 
 tian service, which may be used for the conversion and 
 blessing of those who are thus drawn. This same old 
 man is now superintendent of the Sunday school which 
 meets in Winthrop's schoolhouse, and leader also of 
 the mid-week prayer-meeting. The last time the Visitor 
 was at the Pine Knot School, he met the old man on the 
 road going to Winthrop's house. He gave a hearty greet- 
 ing, and asked him to speak to the neighbors at the next 
 meeting; but the Visitor afterwards learned that his 
 errand just then was not at all a religious or peaceable 
 
Preaching by Hand 203 
 
 one. At a recent "wake," or carousal at the house of 
 a dead man, he had been threatened by his drunken 
 son-in-law with a pistol, and he was now going to request 
 the loan of Winthrop 's buggy to go down and swear out 
 a warrant for the miscreant. Mr. Winthrop told him 
 he might have the horse and buggy, but talked with 
 him a little about the Christian's duty and privilege 
 of forgiving. The old man went home to think it over. 
 He studied over it for twenty-four hours, but the next 
 day he came back and told Winthrop he would not need 
 the buggy now; he had gained the victory over himself ; 
 and though his son-in-law had drawn a gun on him 
 that almost unforgivable offense in the hills he would 
 forgive him. That night was prayer-meeting night, 
 and the clan leader, big, bony, white-haired, leonine, 
 had a glowing face as he led his fellows in prayer and 
 testimony. The leaven was working. 
 
 The "ministry of the word" of most value is that 
 ministry of the Word which was made flesh and dwelt 
 among us, going about doing good, and healing all that 
 were possessed of the devil. Preaching that is unaccom- 
 panied by works of faith and helpfulness is not the 
 kind of preaching that Christ did. The proclamation 
 of the truth by oral preaching is indeed of value, but it 
 is of value only when it has the power of the Word 
 within it; and that power is the power to minister to 
 men. 
 
 "Our Lord Jesus Christ came to this world as the 
 unwearied servant of man's necessity"; and when his 
 followers take the same position, there will be power 
 in the word they have to speak; they will be able to speak 
 as those having authority, and not as the scribes and 
 Pharisees. 
 
 "Nothing will so arouse a self-sacrificing zeal and 
 broaden and strengthen the character as to engage in 
 work for others. Many professed Christians, hi seeking 
 church relationship, think only of themselves. They 
 wish to enjoy church fellowship and pastoral care. They 
 
2O4 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 become members of large and prosperous churches, 
 and are content to do little for others. In this way they 
 are robbing themselves of the most precious blessings. 
 Many would be greatly benefitted by sacrificing their 
 pleasant, ease-conducing associations. They need to 
 go where their energies will be called out in Christian 
 work, and they can learn to bear responsibilities. 
 
 " Trees that are crowded closely together do not 
 grow healthfully and sturdily. The gardener transplants 
 them that they may have room to develop. A similar 
 work would benefit many of the members of large 
 churches. They need to be placed where their energies 
 will be called forth in active Christian effort. They are 
 losing their spiritual life, becoming dwarfed and inef- 
 ficient, for want of self-sacrificing labor for others. 
 Transplanted to some missionary field, they would grow 
 strong and vigorous. 
 
 "But none need wait until called to some distant 
 field before beginning to help others. Doors of service 
 are open everywhere. All around us are those who need 
 our help. The widow, the orphan, the sick and the 
 dying, the heart-sick, the discouraged, the ignorant, 
 and the outcast, are on every hand. 
 
 "We should feel it our special duty to work for those 
 living hi our neighborhood. Study how you can best 
 help those who take no interest in religious things. As 
 you visit your friends and neighbors, show an interest 
 in their spiritual as well as in their temporal welfare. 
 Speak to them of Christ as a sin-pardoning Saviour. 
 Invite your neighbors to your home, and read with them 
 from the precious Bible and from books that explain 
 its truths. Invite them to unite with you in song and 
 prayer. In these little gatherings, Christ himself will 
 be present, as he has promised, and hearts will be touched 
 by his grace. 
 
 "Church-members should educate themselves to do 
 this work. This is just as essential as to save the be- 
 nighted souls in foreign countries. While some feel the 
 
Preaching by Hand 205 
 
 burden for souls afar off, let the many who are at home 
 feel the burden of precious souls who are around them, 
 and work just as diligently for their salvation. 
 
 "Many regret that they are living a narrow life. 
 They themselves can make their lives broad and influen- 
 tial if they will. Those who love Jesus with heart and 
 mind and soul, and their neighbor as themselves, have 
 a wide field in which to use their ability and influence. 
 
 "Let none pass by little opportunities, to look for 
 larger work. You might do successfully the small work, 
 but fail utterly in attempting the larger work and fall 
 into discouragement. It is by doing with your might 
 what you find to do that you will develop aptitude for 
 larger work. It is by slighting the daily opportunities, 
 by neglecting the little things right at hand, that so many 
 become fruitless and withered. 
 
 "Do not depend upon human aid. Look beyond 
 human beings, to the One appointed by God to bear 
 our griefs, to carry our sorrows, and to supply our ne- 
 cessities. Taking God at his word, make a beginning 
 wherever you find work to do, and move forward with 
 unfaltering faith. It is faith in Christ's presence that 
 gives strength and steadfastness. Work with unselfish 
 interest, with painstaking effort, with persevering en- 
 ergy. 
 
 "In fields where the conditions are so objectionable 
 and disheartening that many are unwilling to go to them, 
 remarkable changes have been wrought by the efforts 
 of self-sacrificing workers. Patiently and perse veringly 
 they labored, not relying upon human power, but upon 
 God, and his grace sustained them. The amount of good 
 thus accomplished will never be known in this world, 
 but blessed results will be seen in the great hereafter." 
 
 1 Mrs. B. G. White, Ministry of Healing, pp. i, 151-154. 
 
XVII 
 SERMONS IN SOIL 
 
 THE greater number of these rural-school workers in 
 the South look to the soil for a livelihood, and this 
 will be the case with the large majority who come in 
 the future. This is as it should be. Families with chil- 
 dren should not go to the cities. The natural conditions 
 of life are hi the country, and there the children should 
 grow up into Christian life in the midst of the handi- 
 work of God. 
 
 Moreover, the farm is the surest means of support. 
 The whole structure of the economic world rests upon 
 the farm. The world is fed and clothed, and in great 
 part provided with shelter and warmth, by the farmer. 
 As a forceful writer puts it: "We realize (we farmers) 
 that we are the foundation: we connect human life with 
 earth. We dig and plant and produce, and having eaten 
 at the first table ourselves, we pass what is left to the 
 bankers and millionaires. Did you ever think, stranger, 
 that the most of the wars of the world have been fought 
 for the control of the farmer's second table? Have you 
 thought that the surplus of wheat and corn and cotton 
 is what the railroads are struggling to carry? Upon our 
 surplus run all the factories and mills; a little of it gath- 
 ered in cash makes a millionaire. But we farmers, we sit 
 back comfortably after dinner, and joke with our wives 
 and play with our babies, and let all the rest of you 
 (206) 
 
Sermons in Soil 207 
 
 fight for the crumbs that fall from our abundant tables. 
 If once we really cared and got up and shook ourselves, 
 and said to the maid: 'Here, child, don't waste the 
 crusts: gather 'em up and tomorrow we'll have a cot- 
 tage pudding/ where in the world would all the mil- 
 lionaires be? . . . Moreover, think of the position 
 of the millionaire. He spends his time playing not 
 with life, but with the symbols of life, whether cash or 
 houses. Any day the symbols may change: a little war 
 may happen along, there may be a defective flue or a 
 western breeze, or even a panic because the farmers 
 aren't scattering as many crumbs as usual (they call 
 it crop failure, but I've noticed that the farmers still 
 continue to have plenty to eat), and then what happens 
 to your millionaire? Not knowing how to produce 
 anything himself, he would starve to death if there were 
 not always, somewhere, a farmer to take him up to the 
 table." l 
 
 If there is any place where the Christian worker 
 may be able to weather a storm, either financial or re- 
 ligious, it is on the soil. There he may, indeed, suffer 
 privation, but so long as God's bounty continues, he 
 cannot be utterly crushed out. Panics, bank failures, 
 strikes, riots, boycotts, may refuse him cooperation in 
 exchange of products, may deprive him of ready cash 
 with which he might buy silk dresses and oranges, but 
 he can raise his own wool and corn and potatoes, and if 
 necessity demands, can convert his cotton or wool or 
 skins into serviceable garments. The last stronghold 
 of independence that will remain to be taken is the farm. 
 The last troubles in this earth's history may, indeed will, 
 drive God's people to the caves and deserts and swamps, 
 but for long before that culmination comes, they will 
 find refuge from the common woes of a distracted, cha- 
 otic world, on the ground where God placed the feet of 
 their first parents. 
 
 But far more than the mere making of a living, 
 
 Grayson, Adventures in Contentment, pp. 115, 116. 
 
2o8 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 the soil, with its products, is to be the medium of an im- 
 portant education. " There are lessons that our chil- 
 dren need to learn. To the little child, not yet capable 
 of learning from the printed page or of being introduced 
 to the routine of the schoolroom, nature presents an 
 unfailing source of instruction and delight. The heart 
 not yet hardened by contact with evil is quick to recog- 
 nize the Presence that pervades all created things. The 
 ear as yet undulled by the world's clamor is attentive 
 to the Voice that speaks through nature's utterances. 
 And for those of older years, needing continually its 
 silent reminders of the spiritual and eternal, nature's 
 teaching will be no less a source of pleasure and of in- 
 struction. As the dwellers in Eden learned from nature's 
 pages, as Moses discerned God's handwriting on the 
 Arabian plains and mountains, and the child Jesus on 
 the hillsides of Nazareth, so the children of today may 
 learn of him. The unseen is illustrated by the seen. On 
 everything upon the earth from the loftiest tree of the 
 forest to the lichen that clings to the rock, from the 
 boundless ocean to the tiniest shell on the shore, they 
 may behold the image and superscription of God." 
 " Patient, painstaking effort needs to be made for 
 the encouragement and uplifting of the surrounding 
 communities, and for their education in industrial and 
 sanitary lines. The school and all its surroundings 
 should be object-lessons, teaching the ways of improve- 
 ment, and appealing to the people for reform, so that 
 taste, industry, and refinement may take the place of 
 coarseness, uncleanliness, disorder, ignorance, and sin. 
 Even the poorest can improve their surroundings by 
 rising early and working diligently. By our lives and ex- 
 ample we can help others to discern that which is re- 
 pulsive in their character or about their premises, and 
 with Christian courtesy we may encourage improve- 
 ment." 1 
 
 E. G. White, Education, p. 100; Testimonies for the Church, 
 VoL VI, p. 188. 
 
Sermons in Soil 209 
 
 It is not only the farmer 's neighbors, but the farmer 
 himself, who is to be taught. Indeed, it is most neces- 
 sary for any farmer entering a new country to learn 
 all he can of local conditions from his neighbors. The 
 less time it takes him to make his living, the more time 
 can he find for Christian work among them. And not 
 only his financial success, not only his missionary ac- 
 tivities, but his own spiritual growth, is dependent in 
 a degree upon his successful farming. If, because of 
 poor crops, he is overworked and worried, he is in no 
 proper frame of mind to listen to God or to speak for 
 God. The spiritual lessons which the Saviour taught 
 us to find in seed-sowing and harvest, are belied by poor 
 farming. A thin, sickly, straggling field of grain or 
 vegetables is a poor figure for the kingdom of God, 
 as is also a batch of sour bread. A sound, scientific, 
 intelligent understanding of the laws of God in nature, 
 and how to control and use their operation, is an ex- 
 cellent basis for sound theology. 
 
 One whose experience is typical of many thus ac- 
 knowledges it: "I made an astounding series of mistakes 
 when I first tried to teach my neighbors how to farm. 
 In the first place, I could not bring myself to the idea 
 that I had to plow around the hills. I would not do it; 
 I ran my rows the way I wanted to, and that was, straight. 
 The result was that the most of my soil washed off the 
 hillsides into the hollows. 
 
 "My second mistake was to plant my crops too 
 thick. I expected two or three stalks of corn to mature 
 in a hill, j ust as they used to in my native State. I thought 
 it was just a notion that only one stalk could grow in a 
 hill. So I planted my corn just as I wanted to, with the 
 result that I got plenty of leaves, but little or no grain. 
 
 "My farm is in a country that practises 'terracing.' 
 I did not believe in terracing, and at first plowed right 
 through the ridges. I spent much money for fertilizer, 
 only to see it washed away. Then I tried to ditch and 
 terrace for myself, but not understanding how, I only 
 14 
 
2io The Men of the Mountains 
 
 made bad matters worse. Finally, the fourth year, I 
 employed a neighbor who knew what he was about, 
 and we laid the hills off on a proper system of terraces. 
 It took me about four years to learn that although I had 
 been considered a successful farmer in the North, I was 
 not yet fitted to be a teacher of farming under Southern 
 conditions. Now, my neighbors and I consult freely to- 
 gether over plans and methods. I am able to teach as 
 well as to learn, and we all recognize that there is much 
 for us yet to learn together." 
 
 Another, who is foremost as an authority on agri- 
 culture among the self-supporting workers, and who has 
 been employed by the State to teach the subject in some 
 of its teachers' institutes, says: 
 
 " Every successful farmer recognizes that he must 
 modify his methods of soil cultivation to suit climatic 
 conditions. Many of the methods that make for suc- 
 cessful farming in one section cannot be followed in an- 
 other. For instance, in the North the soil is left to weather 
 during the winter, locked up with frost and snow. In 
 the South, if that method is followed, it results, because 
 of open weather, in the leaching and evaporating of a 
 large portion of the most valuable plant foods during 
 the winter. An uncultivated soil in the South during 
 the winter may mean the loss of twenty-one per cent of 
 the whole year's heat units, and of a large amount of 
 available nitrogen, the most costly of plant foods. South- 
 ern farming needs to be studied from the standpoint 
 of the South, and not subjected empirically to Northern 
 methods." 
 
 Not every one, of course, can have the advantage 
 of even a short course in scientific agriculture, but re- 
 liable scientific instruction is now so common in books, 
 in bulletins, and through the personal help of repre- 
 sentatives of State and federal agricultural bureaus, 
 that no man has the excuse that he cannot learn. Sanc- 
 tified common sense, as well as practical experience 
 
Sermons in Soil 211 
 
 and wide-awake interest in the new, will do wonders 
 for the missionary farmer. 
 
 Take the farm at the Shamrock School. The main 
 part of this farm lies up on a tongue of land that is 
 bounded below by brooks or " branches." When the 
 workers went there, that old gray hill lay up bare to 
 the sun, like the scraped dry head of a tonsured monk. 
 Around the house was a fringe of weeds and sassafras 
 shoots, but the fields resisted even the sassafras. They 
 went there with almost nothing, having put what lit- 
 tle money they had into buying the place. They grubbed 
 the brush, and they plowed and harrowed the fields, but 
 they found them too poor to grow even legumes. They 
 tried cow peas, and then they tried soy beans. They 
 put them into the ground, and on some of their land they 
 got back not even as much as the seed. Some of the 
 beans sprouted, grew an inch or two high, and then died. 
 They decided that it was cheaper to work out and earn 
 money to live on, and turn their crops under for fertilizer. 
 They succeeded in growing some rye, and turned it un- 
 der; then soy beans gave a little more promise, and they 
 turned that crop under; rye again in the winter, fol- 
 lowed with corn, which made some forage, but was also 
 partly turned under. Not all their land was so poor as 
 this, however; so that they did get some returns, but the 
 most of it was poor enough. Today, by feeding then- soil, 
 they have raised the productivity of some of their land 
 to forty bushels of corn to the acre, and they get very 
 fair crops of legumes and vegetables. They have used 
 very little commercial fertilizer, but realize that their 
 land needs liming. They have a splendid little vine- 
 yard and a good peach orchard. Their milch cows, 
 though few in number, have played an important part 
 in increasing the fertility of the land, for the manure 
 has been carefully conserved and used where it would 
 have the most telling effect. The transformation of 
 that old gray hill in the last six years has been a marvel 
 not only to the neighborhood, but to the friends who 
 
212 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 have visited these brethren. But it has meant hard, 
 grinding toil, as well as careful thought and planning. 
 Many a time they have come to close places for both 
 food and clothing, but cow peas and wild blackberries 
 have never entirely failed, and " imported goods" have 
 been the mainstay in clothing. 
 
 A very important side industry at this school is the 
 cannery, which was opened four years after the school 
 began. It was not merely an economic reason, it was 
 chiefly an educational idea, that started the cannery. 
 Tobacco is the chief money crop in that part of Ten- 
 nessee, and all the mission schools in that section have 
 struck at the base of the tobacco habit by teaching 
 against the culture of tobacco. Two of them, studying 
 how to strike a practical blow at the business, determined 
 to introduce other crops. At one, the substitution of 
 the strawberry and potato crops for tobacco was begun, 
 and the workers demonstrated to their friends both in 
 the school and in the field, that there was more money 
 actually to be made by these crops than by tobacco. 
 At the other school, the raising of garden produce to- 
 matoes, beans, sugar corn, etc. was advocated, and, 
 first for themselves and then for their neighbors, the 
 school-men began canning such products. They estab- 
 lished a town market for their own produce, and then 
 offered to can such things for then- neighbors, if they 
 would raise them, and to find a market for all they de- 
 sired to sell. 
 
 The cannery at the Shamrock School became a 
 very considerable industry, employing not only the 
 children and several of the older people in the school, 
 but a number of hands from the neighborhood. A small 
 but neat building, with canning apparatus on the ground 
 floor and storeroom overhead, was erected. The ut- 
 most neatness and cleanliness was required in the small 
 establishment. No tobacco-chewing or snuff-dipping was 
 allowed, the workers must scrub their hands and faces, 
 their hair must be combed, and then they were arrayed 
 
Sermons in Soil 213 
 
 in enveloping white caps and aprons, with pocket for 
 handkerchief to wipe away perspiration. They were 
 made to feel that the cannery stood for something besides 
 money-making: it exemplified the virtues of order and 
 cleanliness, inside and out. At first the customers were 
 indifferent to the condition in which they brought their 
 produce, but they soon learned to sort it carefully and 
 to bring only sound and properly prepared material. 
 The hands were paid by the piece, and custom work 
 was done on the same basis. New customers appeared 
 every season. A neighbor who had ventured to plant 
 a surplus of Kentucky Wonder beans came bringing 
 them, thinking to try the canner. 
 
 " You're sure they'll keep?" he inquired dubiously. 
 
 "O yes; we have tested them three seasons now." 
 
 "How many beans will it take for a mess for two of 
 us?" was his next question. 
 
 "You will have enough for dinner and some to warm 
 over for supper, out of one of these cans," was the very 
 exact information given him. 
 
 "Well, then," he concluded, "I want some. It'll 
 be mighty fine to have something besides hog and 
 hominy this winter." 
 
 The little cannery had a capacity, when running full, 
 of 500 cans a day. In 1912, 2,900 quarts were canned 
 for the neighbors, and the patronage grew. But it 
 was the endeavor of the Shamrock teachers to induce 
 them to can for themselves, with small outfits. And 
 some began to do it. Thus they created a business 
 each for himself, which displaced the tobacco business, 
 and still with no danger of overstocking the market with 
 canned goods. 
 
 In the neighborhood of both the schools mentioned, 
 the lure has worked well. Tobacco-raising is a laborious 
 and disagreeable task. No plant is so selfish as tobacco. 
 It makes great demands upon the soil, and not a weed 
 must be suffered to grow in the tobacco field except 
 itself. Then comes its enemy, the tobacco worm, which 
 
214 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 is followed assiduously from end to end of the field, 
 searched out on the plants, and usually smashed between 
 the thumb and forefinger. This work falls to the lot of 
 the children, and the children hate it. Oftentimes a 
 child will appear in the school with swollen face and in- 
 flamed eyes from bending over the poisonous plant. 
 
 " What's the matter?" 
 
 "Oh, been working in that old tobacco patch. Wish 
 tobacco had never been born," is the reply. Where 
 the cultivation of tobacco depends chiefly upon white 
 labor, which means the farmer and his children, the crop 
 is heartily detested; but still the farmer continues to 
 raise it, because he knows of nothing else which will 
 have the ready and profitable sale that tobacco has. 
 When it is demonstrated to him that there are other 
 crops which cost less in soil fertility and less in labor, 
 and bring equal or greater money returns, he begins, 
 slowly perhaps, but surely, to turn away from tobacco. 
 Listen to a report of how the matter was taken up in 
 one of the rimland schools: 
 
 "Now with our children in the school," said the 
 teacher, "I take up the first elements that are in the soil, 
 those elements that are especially short in this country, 
 which are nitrogen, lime, phosphorus, and, in a less degree, 
 potash. We put it up on a chart right back here on the 
 wall. We compare two crops: one, Irish potatoes, per- 
 haps; the other tobacco. We show what elements each 
 of these plants takes from the soil, and they see that 
 tobacco is taking most liberally just those elements of 
 which we have the least, while potatoes take but little 
 of those elements. It takes more potash to build up a 
 thousand pounds of tobacco than it does for three thou- 
 sand pounds of wheat. It takes more potash to build 
 up a thousand pounds of tobacco than it takes to build 
 up five or ten thousand pounds of Irish potatoes. So 
 the continual raising of tobacco on these hill lands has 
 not only depleted them of humus, but has so lowered 
 them in their supply of these elements that the farmers 
 
Sermons in Soil 215 
 
 find it necessary, in order to get a crop of anything, 
 to supply these elements at the rate of two to four 
 hundred pounds of fertilizer per acre. At the high price 
 of commercial fertilizers, the cost of labor, and the ex- 
 pense of marketing, tobacco is the most expensive crop 
 that can be grown. To get the farmer and the farmer's 
 boy and the farmer's girl to see this, we take these dif- 
 ferent crops and put them on the board and show what 
 they cost in these elements, figuring each at the market 
 price; we figure in the time of the grower and the cost 
 of the marketing. We have these boys and girls do this 
 themselves, from the statistics which we give them. 
 And you never saw boys and girls more interested. 
 They will stay in at recess figuring on these things, and 
 come around to us to get a bit more information on this 
 and on that. And the conclusion they reach you can 
 see what it is. They discover that from an economic 
 standpoint they cannot afford to raise tobacco, and they 
 see the desirability of raising a crop that will furnish 
 food for them. 
 
 "Now this nas its effect especially on the younger 
 people. The old farmers are dubious, when they hear 
 these things through their children or direct from us; 
 they shake their heads and go on the same old way. 
 But among the younger men there comes evidence of a 
 break. One young man of our neighborhood just came 
 to me this week, and said, ' I believe we have got to stop 
 raising this tobacco, though it has been our only money 
 crop. It would be the best thing for this country that 
 could happen if we would stop raising tobacco. And/ 
 he said, 'I am going to try a good big piece in Irish po- 
 tatoes this year, and see what I do.' 
 
 "Then in the physiology class we have our next 
 chance. This study of statistics which they have worked 
 out themselves, as to the economic value of tobacco 
 as compared with other crops, has impressed them, 
 and they are ready for something more. We show 
 the effects of tobacco on the lungs, the throat, the heart, 
 
216 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 the membrane of the mouth, the blood, and the brain, 
 showing how it stops the energy of the child, making 
 him indolent and lazy, making him careless, making 
 him rude. Do you know it makes them rude? I made 
 a point on that. To my class over in the county normal, 
 I put this thing: 'Have you noticed and compared 
 those of your acquaintance who use tobacco, and those 
 who do not? Who is stunted, and who is well developed? 
 Is the color of the skin rosy or sallow? How are the teeth? 
 Is the eye bright or not? What are the manners, slouchy 
 and sloven, or well-poised and civil? How does the boy 
 do in his studies?' I had them give the names of boys. 
 Every one of them using tobacco fell down on the de- 
 sirable attributes. It astonished the class to have their 
 own knowledge thus brought before them. 
 
 "So there is a lever to help pry with in the physi- 
 ology class. Tea and coffee are taken up in this connec- 
 tion, and their effects as well as the effects of alcohol 
 are taken up. I have done this in the normal school. 
 I have said to them, 'You have a great campaign on 
 against alcohol, yet you are poisoning yourselves with 
 tea and coffee and tobacco, which are as deadly as ar- 
 senic or opium or alcohol/ 
 
 "This combination of the study of agriculture and 
 physiology on the tobacco question has affected in a 
 very strong way many of the serious-minded students. 
 Many of them have ceased drinking coffee and tea, 
 boys have quit the tobacco habit, and some grown men 
 and women who have attended these lectures have also 
 put it away, and in their fight on this habit have come 
 to me repeatedly, asking me for help and advice. 
 
 "A few days ago a young woman, a teacher, came 
 to me and asked, 'What can a person do who has used 
 tobacco for thirty years, to make it easier to quit the 
 habit?' She and her husband had been attending the 
 lectures. I had not noticed any apparent effect of the 
 studies on the class; that is, no break in habit or ap- 
 
iE, LEFT HIS MOUKTAI1N 
 
 AND WE/NT 
 TO THE SCHOOL, 
 
 AND LEARNED 
 TO BUILD THIS 
 
 At Cowee Mountain School, North Carolina. 
 
 Through the study of the work his hands performed, he was to learn 
 higher and higher truth." Page 217. 
 
Sermons in Soil 217 
 
 pearance. And I said to her, 'Why, I don't know of any 
 such case. Where is there any such person?' 
 
 "And she said, 'Well, here is one. That is my case. 
 And my husband is another/ 
 
 "I said, 'When did you begin to leave it off?' 
 
 "She said, 'After your first lecture. We see what 
 it means, and we made up our minds not to be slaves 
 any longer. And we are still determined. But if you 
 know of anything which will help my husband, I wish 
 you would tell me something that will stop the ter- 
 rible pain in the head, and the nervousness. Isn't 
 there anything you can tell me that will make it easier 
 for him?' 
 
 "Now that was a heart-touching thing. They had 
 heard the truth, and without any ado, any talk, any an- 
 nouncement of it, they started out to obey the truth, 
 and they struggled on with it for three weeks without 
 saying anything. She had stopped using tea and coffee, 
 and he had stopped using tobacco. And now all they 
 wanted to know was if there was any help for them. 
 There was no question of turning back, but there was 
 a cry from overtaxed nerves and will, a cry for help 
 from some one who had the truth. And that, my breth- 
 ren, was an opening for more truth." 
 
 But is there any teaching of vital truth in all this 
 work? There is, indeed! It has become the habit of 
 modern Christianity to regard truth too much in the 
 abstract. The next natural step is to regard truth, 
 the abstract, as unimportant. It was not so with the 
 Christianity of Christ and the apostles. The healing 
 of the sick went on with the telling of principles of truth; 
 the life was reformed as the mind was instructed. The 
 salvation of Christ meant higher living, better methods, 
 greater life and power. 
 
 God makes truth concrete. He set man in a garden 
 home at the first, to dress and to keep it. And through 
 the study of the work his hands performed, and the 
 objects with which all his senses dealt, he was to learn 
 
218 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 higher and higher truth. "The system of education 
 instituted at the beginning of the world, was to be a 
 model for man throughout all after- time/ ' and even 
 " under changed conditions, true education is still con- 
 formed to the Creator's plan, the plan of the Eden 
 school." 1 
 
 It is of no value to a man that he be induced to 
 subscribe to a dogma of faith, if it have no concrete 
 meaning in his life. The best method of instruction is 
 to reveal the doctrine by a practical application in life. 
 It is upon this basis that the rural mission schools are 
 endeavoring to proclaim the truth, and there is this 
 commendation for them: "In the work being done at 
 the training school for home and foreign missionary 
 teachers in Madison, Tennessee, and in the small schools 
 established by the teachers who have gone forth from 
 Madison, we have an illustration of a way in which the 
 message should be carried. . . . Let us strengthen 
 this company to continue the good work in which they 
 are engaged, and labor to encourage others to do a 
 similar work. Then the light of truth will be carried 
 in a simple and effective way, and a great work will be ac- 
 complished for the Master in a short time." 2 
 
 E. G. White, Education, pp. 20, 30. 
 'Mrs. E. G. White, MS., January 6, 1908. 
 
Ittodfott 
 
"How best to accomplish the work in this field is 
 the problem before us. Great progress might have 
 been made in medical missionary work. Sanita- 
 riums might have been established. The principles 
 of health reform might have been proclaimed. This 
 work is now to be taken up, and into it not a ves- 
 tige of selfishness is to be brought. It is to be 
 done with an earnestness, perseverance, and devo- 
 tion that will open doors through which the truth 
 can enter, and that to stay." ELLEN G. WHITE. 
 
XVIII 
 FOLLOWING THE GREAT PHYSICIAN 
 
 is no longer in this world in person, to go 
 through our cities and towns and villages, healing 
 the sick; but he has commissioned us to carry forward 
 the medical missionary work that he began. " 1 
 
 There is no class who have greater influence than 
 physicians. Whoever relieves distress of body (and 
 thereby often distress of mind) possesses a hold upon 
 the affections and confidence of people which can be 
 gained by few others. The farther the medical pro- 
 fession has advanced out of quackery and empiricism, 
 out of drug medication and speculative prescription, 
 the more completely has it gained influence with men. 
 That influence, when devoted to rescuing men not only 
 from disease but from sin, is a precious possession; but 
 too often it is turned into another direction. Yet when 
 the missionary records of the world take from among 
 physicians such glorious names as Livingstone in Africa, 
 Grant in Persia, Mackenzie in China, and Grenfell in 
 Laborador, there is surely inspiration to their fellows 
 to devote their splendid talents to more than the getting 
 of money and reputation. 
 
 In the mountains there is need of physicians who 
 will be at once philanthropists and educators. It can- 
 not be said that there is any greater lack of physicians 
 
 !Mrs. E. G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. IX, pp. 168, 
 169. 
 
 221 
 
222 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 here than elsewhere, at least in the more populous 
 and wealthy sections; yet there is the greatest room 
 for physicians who use simple means of cure, and who 
 will teach the people how to preserve as well as to re- 
 gain health. And there are many isolated sections 
 where the services of competent physicians are sorely 
 needed. The difficulty in inducing Christian physicians 
 to settle in such places is the same difficulty that has 
 debarred other physicians: the isolation of the location, 
 and the poverty of the people. The one shuts the phy- 
 sician largely from that contact with the rapidly advan- 
 cing science of his profession which he desires, and the 
 other prevents the remuneration which he counts his 
 due. Yet the rewards of such service have been found 
 by some as precious as the equally laborious and self- 
 sacrificing work of medical missionaries in foreign lands. 
 
 In the spring of 1907 a Christian physician who had 
 had an important part in medical work in the South, 
 found his health so impaired that, leaving the large 
 city where he was practising, he retired for rest to a place 
 his father had bought on a part of the Cumberland 
 Plateau. It was a quiet enough place, almost out of 
 the world, it seemed, and Dr. and Mrs. Cornwall set- 
 tled down with a sigh of relief in their little log cabin, 
 to rest and study. But, like the great Physician who 
 retired in his weariness to a desert place in Galilee, 
 the doctor found that there was to be little rest for him. 
 Only three or four days after their arrival, he was called 
 out at midnight by a boy on muleback, who had come 
 to guide him four or five miles through the woods to 
 attend a dying woman. She was a poor outcast, who 
 had been left alone in a log hut, where she had a few 
 days before given birth to twins. Some of the neighbors 
 attended her at that time, but afterwards left her alone; 
 and, neglected and uncared for, she had sunk into a 
 fever in which she was thought to be dying. 
 
 Out there in the black wilderness that night, there 
 came to the doctor the vision of a needy people such as 
 
Following the Great Physician 223 
 
 he had never seen in his years of official life and insti- 
 tutionalism. In that lowly cabin he ministered to the 
 needs of this young woman, passed the crisis success- 
 fully, and afterwards brought her to health. From that 
 time on he was besieged by people from increasingly 
 greater distances, until he began to have calls from as 
 far as twenty miles away. There was not another phy- 
 sician on the breadth and length of that mountain pla- 
 teau, twenty by one hundred miles. 
 
 The sympathies of Dr. Cornwall and his wife were 
 drawn out in many directions for this people, and 
 soon they were busy hi more than one phase of work 
 school, social, and industrial, as well as medical. 
 The doctor's attention and energies were called twenty 
 ways at once. Was a tray of cans just ready, in the 
 canning shed, to go into the tank, was a wall being laid 
 by unskilled hands, was the garden crying for cultiva- 
 tion, there would surely come riding up a messenger, 
 crying: "My neighbor's daughter is took powerful sick. 
 She et too big a bate of fresh meat, and her misery's 
 raging terrible. They're skeered she won't live, and 
 want you to come over quick. They live on the fur 
 brow of the mountain, on a cross-road 'tother side of the 
 big ravine. I'll show you the way." What could he do 
 but go, perhaps not to get home until early the next morn- 
 ing, and then tired, hungry, and cold? The familiar, 
 "Hello! Where's the doctor at?" was one of their great- 
 est hindrances, and still one of their most precious op- 
 portunities. Physical suffering was a goad that drove 
 the people with decreasing reluctance to those who 
 could help, strangers though they might at first be. 
 
 Miss Rexall, a trained nurse who had accompanied 
 them, was a mainstay hi the doctor's work, and she 
 developed surprizingly a resourcefulness not only hi 
 meeting emergencies, but in finding her way through 
 almost trackless stretches of country, to carry out the 
 doctor's directions for treatment in some needy home. 
 His directions might be: "Go down this road till you 
 
224 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 come to a fork. Take the left-hand one and go till you 
 come to a blazed tree on your right. Then you'll see 
 a little trail going to your left again. Follow that until 
 you come to an old field that's nearly grown up. Go 
 around the corner of it and along by that fence, and you 
 come to a branch that you have to ford. You may have 
 a little trouble in getting Fanny across, but if you insist 
 she'll make it all right. Well, go straight ahead and 
 you come out on the big road in about eighty rods. 
 Turn to your right now and go two miles. You'll come 
 to a road going to your left; don't take that; and then 
 a turn in the road to your right; follow that, because the 
 dim road straight ahead only leads down where they've 
 been getting out cross ties. It is only a little turn. You can 
 tell when you've gone about two miles; then you will 
 see a clump of big pine trees and a fork hi the road. 
 And down to the left, at the end of a lane, is the house. 
 You'll find a sick woman there. Give her alternate hot 
 and cold to the spine, a tepid sponge bath, and a cold 
 mitten friction. Don't forget the ice-cap; the spring 
 water is cold enough to answer for that. She needs a 
 hot pack, but there is no chance to give her that. Get 
 her quiet before you leave her, and leave this sedative 
 for emergencies." 
 
 And on old Fanny, the mule, Miss Rexall would make 
 her way, guided by the signs and doubtless by the an- 
 gels, coming back again with an interesting tale of 
 need and ministry and hospitality, and usually with a 
 message or two from other cases found en route. And 
 always her story would end with, "Oh, if we only had 
 some place where we could put that poor thing, where 
 we could feed her and give her better care." 
 
 And the doctor would return from a piece of crit- 
 ical surgical work done in a little cabin where surgical 
 cleanliness was almost impossible, to declare: "Oh, how 
 clean our own dirt seems! It was terrible to do sur- 
 gical work in such a place, but I feel that he'll get along 
 all right. He couldn't live without it, and I believe 
 
Following the Great Physician 225 
 
 the Lord will make up for what we couldn't do. But 
 we've got to have a place near by that we can keep 
 clean." 
 
 To meet the needs of hospital and school, they 
 planned, and, through many difficulties, at last suc- 
 ceeded, in putting up a small two-story building, with 
 basement. Measured by their importunate needs, the 
 work of excavation, masonry, and carpentry seemed to 
 crawl, but it was at last energized and finished by the 
 coming of one of that company of missionary mechanics 
 whose work has meant so much in the building up of 
 some of these schools. 
 
 The financial resources of Dr. Cornwall were at this 
 time slight. He carried no fortune into the wilderness 
 with him, and his medical work was largely charitable. 
 All that he could earn, what little came to him from 
 other sources, was speedily eaten up by the needs of 
 home and farm and school and building, until the work 
 grew so heavy that he decided he must seek an oppor- 
 tunity for greater earnings. 
 
 Just at this time, in the spring of 1908, several nurses 
 who had previously been with him seemed to have no 
 prospects for employment, and, planning with them, 
 he decided to open a small sanitarium work in the near- 
 est large city, thirty miles from his railway station 
 in the valley. It was the doctor's hope that it might 
 prove a means of financial assistance to his work on the 
 mountain. And so it might, if it had not been, for him, 
 three men's work. During the day he attended to his 
 practise in the city, while his wife, with two or three 
 helpers, held the fort on the mountain; at night he would 
 travel to and from his home, sometimes carrying pro- 
 visions in his arms three miles up the mountain road, 
 returning early in the morning to the city. Often his 
 rest at night was broken by a call from some sick high- 
 lander, and sometimes he was prevented by his work 
 there from reaching the city. His faithful nurses in 
 both places made up all they could for his absence. But 
 15 
 
226 
 
 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 such a life could not last forever. Sickness in his family 
 brought additional anxieties and burdens, resulting in a 
 nervous breakdown, which necessitated his retiring 
 from the field for several months. With deep regret 
 the work was surrendered to others; but the influence of 
 that unselfish and devoted effort remains today in the 
 hearts and lives and minds of that elevated community. 
 
XIX 
 
 THE RURAL SANITARIUM 
 
 CEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS from their earliest 
 * ' history have earnestly advocated simple, right liv- 
 ing and rational methods of healing. These principles 
 have made a deep impression upon the denominational 
 character, and have given a distinct trend to their work. 
 They believe that the divine plan of country life is based 
 upon right laws for the development of the entire man 
 and for maintaining health of body, mind, and soul. It 
 is reasonable, therefore, to hold that an institution whose 
 object is the restoration of health has great advantages 
 if located in the country. 
 
 The tendency of the world is toward centralization 
 and extreme specialization, as seen in the rapid creation 
 and development of cities, monopolies, and tyrannies, but 
 there are men who, grasping the plan of God, are moving 
 their homes and their institutions away from these cen- 
 ters of artificial activity to the more normal environments 
 found in rural communities. Here the tenor of men's 
 minds is changed by dwelling upon the objects of nature. 
 
 For the healing of diseased bodies and minds, there 
 is no environment so favorable as the country, and no 
 agencies so powerful as those gifts of God, pure food, 
 fresh air, sleep, sunshine, work, and unselfish service 
 for others. The sick need to be brought into close 
 touch with nature. An outdoor life amid natural 
 
 (227) 
 
228 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 surroundings has worked wonders for many a helpless 
 and almost hopeless invalid. 
 
 This truth has been well expressed in the following 
 words: "The noise and excitement and confusion of the 
 cities, their constrained and artificial life, are most 
 wearisome and exhausting to the sick. The air, laden 
 with smoke and dust, with poisonous gases, and with 
 germs of disease, is a peril to life. The sick, for the 
 most part shut within four walls, come almost to feel 
 as if they were prisoners in then* rooms. They look 
 out on houses and pavements and hurrying crowds, 
 with perhaps not even a glimpse of blue sky or sun- 
 shine, of grass or flower or tree. Shut up in this way, 
 they brood over their suffering and sorrow, and become 
 a prey to then* own sad thoughts. 
 
 "And for those who are weak in moral power, the 
 cities abound hi dangers. In them, patients who have 
 unnatural appetites to overcome are continually exposed 
 to temptation. They need to be placed amid new sur- 
 roundings, where the current of their thoughts will 
 be changed, they need to be placed under influences 
 wholly different from those that have wrecked their 
 lives. Let them for a season be removed from those 
 influences that lead away from God, into a purer atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 "Institutions for the care of the sick would be far 
 more successful if they could be established .away from 
 the cities. And so far as possible, all who are seeking 
 to recover health should place themselves amid country 
 surroundings, where they can have the benefit of outdoor 
 life. Nature is God's physician. The pure air, the 
 glad sunshine, the flowers and trees, the orchards and 
 vineyards, and outdoor exercise amid these surround- 
 ings, are health-giving, life-giving. 
 
 "Physicians and nurses should encourage their pa- 
 tients to be much in the open air. Outdoor life is the 
 only remedy that many invalids need. It has a won- 
 derful power to heal diseases caused by the excitements 
 
The Rural Sanitarium 229 
 
 and excesses of fashionable life, a life that weakens and 
 destroys the powers of body, mind, and soul. 
 
 "How grateful to the invalids weary of city life, 
 the glare of many lights, and the noise of the streets, 
 are the quiet and freedom of the country! How eagerly 
 do they turn to the scenes of nature! How glad would 
 they be to sit in the open air, rejoice in the sunshine, 
 and breathe the fragrance of tree and flower! There 
 are life-giving properties in the balsam of the pine, 
 in the fragrance of the cedar and the fir, and other trees 
 also have properties that are health-restoring. 
 
 "To the chronic invalid, nothing so tends to restore 
 health and happiness as living amid attractive country 
 surroundings. Here the most helpless ones can sit 
 or lie in the sunshine or in the shade of the trees. They 
 have only to lift their eyes to see above them the beauti- 
 ful foliage. A sweet sense of restfulness and refreshing 
 conies over them as they listen to the murmuring of 
 the breezes. The drooping spirits revive. The waning 
 strength is recruited. Unconsciously the mind becomes 
 peaceful, the fevered pulse more calm and regular." 
 
 The Rural Sanitarium in connection with the Madison 
 School stands in close adherence to this ideal. At the 
 time the school farm was being bought, Mrs. E. G. 
 White pointed out a site in a grove, some three hundred 
 yards from the old farm house, saying, "This would 
 be a good place to put your sanitarium. " Nearly on that 
 spot today stand the simple buildings of the Rural Sani- 
 tarium. 
 
 It did not seem within the possibilities, during the 
 first few years of struggle, to take any steps toward 
 establishing a sanitarium. But the foundations were 
 early laid, in the training of nurses. While yet the old 
 farm house, with its low, dark rooms and drafty doors, 
 was the only home of the school, Mrs. Druillard took in 
 hand the education of the first nurses' class of five girls. 
 
 Their class was held in an upper room that also 
 
 1 Mrs. E. G. White, Ministry of Healing, pp. 262-264. 
 
230 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 served as a sleeping room. Here they heated their water 
 for fomentations hi an iron pot in the fireplace; they 
 demonstrated massage upon a pallet of two planks 
 laid from one bed to another. They studied dietetics 
 and hydrotherapeutics and psychotherapy under con- 
 ditions such as they would find little exceeded out in the 
 mountains. That class has since proved its superior ef- 
 ficiency hi a number of trying positions of responsibility 
 and authority. 
 
 But it was not until the managers felt that their 
 hands were forced by circumstances, under great dis- 
 advantages, to take up the healing work as an institu- 
 tion, that the first steps were taken toward making a 
 sanitarium. One day hi the summer of 1905, there 
 came to the Madison School a man whose home was in 
 the city of Nashville. He was suffering from disease, 
 and wanted a quiet place hi which to recuperate. He 
 stated that he had heard something of the Battle Creek 
 Sanitarium, and he thought he could get those treat- 
 ments there at Madison. But they told him that, while 
 they expected some tune to provide facilities for help- 
 ing sick people, they were not yet in any condition to 
 receive patients. They had but two or three cottages 
 erected, and several of the teachers and most of the 
 students were still crowded into the old farm house. 
 
 But he begged that he might stay. He said he would 
 sleep on the front porch; he would eat at the family 
 table; he would not ask for special treatments. Such im- 
 portunity could not be denied, and he was told he might 
 remain. A blanket partitioned off one end of the ve- 
 randa, and there he slept. Plain and simple vegetarian 
 food was served him on a tray. There was as yet no bath- 
 room, and the only hydropathic facilities were a common 
 wash-tub and a boiler in which to heat the water on the 
 kitchen stove. But sunshine was free, pure fresh air was 
 abundant, and cheerful determination was the key-note 
 of the school. 
 
 Under such conditions the man's strength gradually 
 
The Rural Sanitarium 231 
 
 returned to him, and he went back to the city and re- 
 sumed his business. To his friends he gave the credit 
 for his recovery to the healthful diet, the quiet surround- 
 ings, and the cheerful atmosphere of the school. 
 
 To the school management it seemed that God was 
 pressing them by this and similar circumstances, even 
 before they had sufficient facilities for their school work, 
 to establish a sanitarium in connection with it; and there- 
 fore they planned to do it. It was their purpose to build 
 the sanitarium, not as a distinct institution, but as an 
 integral part of the school. It must partake of the sim- 
 plicity of the school, it must make the same appeal to 
 country environment and life, and it must have its 
 part in educating the students for service. 
 
 To many people the name " sanitarium" conveys 
 the idea of an immense building, with elevators, steam 
 heat, expensive apparatus, gymnasium equipped with 
 many artificial appliances for exercise, and an atmos- 
 phere of artificial life. When one comes upon the Madi- 
 son Rural Sanitarium, the contrast is so strong that it 
 frequently calls forth an exclamation of wonder. Ar- 
 ranged on three sides of a hollow square, with every room 
 fronting on the veranda and open to light and air on 
 two sides, the little one-story sanitarium seems not an 
 institution, but the quiet retreat of a country home. 
 The building is surrounded by trees and blue-grass 
 sward. The sweeping view is beautiful, the quiet is 
 impressive and restful. Patients accustomed to the 
 noise and smoke-laden air of the city, at once appre- 
 ciate the quiet of the Rural Sanitarium. 
 
 The equipment is simple, consisting mostly of the 
 hydropathic appliances in the two small treatment de- 
 partments. For the healing of the sick, reliance is placed 
 upon the natural remedies of fresh air, sunshine, water, 
 proper diet, exercise, peace, and joy. Quietly and gradu- 
 ally the patronage has been built up. Influential peo- 
 ple in Nashville and neighboring towns have found that 
 within easy reach of their own homes there is a quiet 
 
232 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 little retreat where rational treatments are given, and 
 where patients are well cared for. 
 
 The sanitarium patients are much interested in the 
 development of the school. They become acquainted 
 with the system of self-government, the industrial 
 work, and other features of the school. Frequently 
 they attend the Union Meetings, the legislative sessions 
 of the school family. They can be found wandering over 
 the farm where the young men are at work; and they 
 visit and sometimes work in the garden from which 
 the sanitarium table is supplied with vegetables, and 
 the dairy, with whose products they have already be- 
 come acquainted at the sanitarium. Their attention 
 is called to the fact that the buildings are the work 
 of the carpentry class, and this in itself appeals strongly 
 to men and women who are interested in practical edu- 
 cation. And last, their close association with the stu- 
 dents makes them thoroughly acquainted with the chief 
 product of the school. More than once patients have 
 remarked that they have never met another class of 
 young people having so definite, determined, and high 
 a purpose in life. 
 
 Each day at the sanitarium, worship is held in the 
 parlor. From time to time lectures are delivered on 
 health topics, and the minds of the patients are directed 
 to the importance of diet reform, correct habits of liv- 
 ing and thinking, the value of the simple life, the rea- 
 sons for establishing a sanitarium in the country, etc. 
 The home life of many of these patients has been changed 
 as the result of their stay at the sanitarium. They be- 
 come acquainted with the principles here held through 
 conversation with nurses and physicians, by attending 
 Sabbath services with the school family, and through 
 meetings which are held in the sanitarium itself, as well 
 as by the literature at their hand on health and other 
 topics. Often in warm weather the Sabbath vesper 
 service for the entire school family is held on the sani- 
 tarium lawn. It is the custom of physicians, nurses, and 
 
The Rural Sanitarium 233 
 
 workers to hold a daily prayer service in behalf of the 
 patients and the work in general. 
 
 The Rural Sanitarium is a very small institution, 
 but its very simplicity is in its favor. Each patient is 
 dealt with individually. He comes daily in contact 
 with physicians and helpers in a way impossible for 
 patients in a larger sanitarium. The institution main- 
 tains the closest cooperation between school and sani- 
 tarium workers. In the case of the Madison School 
 and the Rural Sanitarium, there are not two institutions. 
 The sanitarium is simply a department of the school. 
 The members of the school faculty are physicians, ma- 
 trons, and helpers in the sanitarium. The nurses trained 
 to carry the work at the sanitarium receive their training 
 under these same physicians and other instructors 
 in the school. They give a part of their time to the 
 sanitarium and a part to the other work of the school, 
 according to the varying needs of the several depart- 
 ments, thus avoiding a wastage of labor. There is abso- 
 lutely no division between the sanitarium workers and 
 the rest of the student body. 
 
 It is not designed to increase greatly the capacity 
 of the institution. The policy of the management is 
 rather to encourage the providing of treatment facili- 
 ties in the out-schools, and to direct patients there 
 whenever their cases seem favorable to the conditions 
 provided. 
 
 The prospects for health homes or treatment-rooms 
 in connection with the rural schools have developed as 
 the result of neighborhood work among the sick. Some 
 among then 1 workers are trained nurses, and practically 
 all of them have acquired some experience through an- 
 swering the calls of the suffering about them. In this 
 work they have often come in contact with the physi- 
 cians of the community, who on acquaintance have be- 
 come their staunch friends. "Whatever Mr. Emmet 
 does," one of them sent word to his anxious patient, 
 "let him alone. He will do everything all right." 
 
234 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 One day there was a surgical operation to be per- 
 formed in a little house near Mr. Emmet's school. A 
 boy had an abscess, and the doctor finally decided it 
 would be necessary to remove a rib in order to drain 
 the cavity. "When I do that," he told Emmet, "I 
 want you to be there." Mr. Emmet was visiting the 
 boy twice a week, treating him under the physician's 
 directions, and trying to teach his parents how to care 
 for him for instance, to feed him fruit and toast in- 
 stead of side-meat and biscuit. 
 
 When Mr. Emmet arrived on the day of the opera- 
 tion, the two surgeons were already there. The boy was 
 lifted upon a rickety kitchen table, the father with a 
 leafy branch kept the flies off, one doctor gave the an- 
 aesthetic, Emmet handed the instruments and held 
 open the wound, while the surgeon did the cutting. 
 When they had gotten the boy back to bed, they stepped 
 out into the yard, and the nurse asked, "Doctor, what do 
 you think about it?" 
 
 He said, "Emmet, the odds are against him, but it 
 is surprising what these people can go through. If I 
 just had some good clean place where I could take some 
 patients, there would be some sort of hope in treating 
 them." 
 
 "Would you," the other asked, "cooperate with us 
 if we could build a little place on the hill where we could 
 take care of your patients?" 
 
 And the surgeon replied with emphasis, "Yes, sir! 
 You will have all the cooperation I can give." 
 
 And today there stands "on the hill" the response to 
 this appeal, in the form of a neat two-story health home, 
 with treatment appliances and room for a dozen patients. 
 Several other schools have provided similar facilities, and 
 practically all are planning to do so as soon as circum- 
 stances permit. The gospel of health is an integral part 
 of the mission of these rural school workers, as it was 
 of their Master. 
 
XX 
 
 THE NURSE AND THE MEDICAL 
 MISSIONARY 
 
 CHRIST, the great Medical Missionary, is our ex- 
 V* ample. Of him it is written that he 'went about 
 all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching 
 the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of 
 sickness and all manner of disease among the people.' 
 Matt. 4: 23. He healed the sick and preached the gos- 
 pel. In his service, healing and teaching were linked 
 closely together. Today they are not to be separated. 
 
 "The nurses who are trained in our institutions are 
 to be fitted up to go out as medical missionary evangel- 
 ists, uniting the ministry of the Word with that of phys- 
 ical healing. . . . 
 
 "All around us are doors open for service. We should 
 become acquainted with our neighbors, and seek to 
 draw them to Christ. As we do this, he will approve 
 and cooperate with us. . . . 
 
 "There should be companies organized, and edu- 
 cated most thoroughly to work as nurses, as evangel- 
 ists, as ministers, as canvassers, as gospel students, to 
 perfect a character after the divine similitude. . . . 
 There should be workers who make medical evangelis- 
 tic tours among the towns and villages. Those who do 
 this work will gather a rich harvest of souls, from both 
 the higher and lower classes." 1 
 
 . E. G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. IX, pp. 170-172. 
 
 235 
 
236 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Such a work as is portrayed above is distinctively 
 that of the self-supporting workers. There is doubt- 
 less not a single group of these workers who do not have 
 constant practise in Christian help work relieving 
 distress and healing the sick. From every one of the 
 rural mission groups, experiences could be related like 
 that of Rachel Black at the Meadowdale School. 
 
 Typhoid is a plague in that section, and when the 
 word came that a neighbor woman and her four chil- 
 dren (the father of the family having but recently died) 
 were all down with typhoid fever, not a person in the 
 neighborhood, not even then* relatives, would go and 
 stay with them. Rachel, an eighteen-year-old girl, 
 packed her valise with a few clothes, and went down to 
 the stricken household. There she stayed for four weeks, 
 doing the cooking and housekeeping, and attending to 
 all five of the cases, night and day. 
 
 When she went there, they had a doctor, an old man, 
 who was dosing them all heavily with drugs; but Miss 
 Rachel induced them to let her try water treatments, 
 whereupon the old doctor refused longer to attend the 
 cases. They sent farther away, to a railroad town, 
 for a younger physician, who, when he came, was de- 
 lighted as well as astonished to find in those backwoods 
 a nurse who understood hydropathic methods of treat- 
 ment, and he readily gave her permission to go on with 
 her work. It was a strenuous life for the nurse, who per- 
 haps presumed too much upon her abundant health and 
 vigor. In one day she gave eleven mitten frictions 
 and oil rubs, besides her other work. She nursed the 
 mother and three of the children back to health, though 
 before they were through with the fever the children 
 were attacked with whooping cough which the dis- 
 gruntled old doctor ascribed to the water treatments! 
 While the fourth child was still convalescent, Miss 
 Rachel herself was stricken down with the fever. The 
 news of her sickness electrified the community, and per- 
 sons who had refused to care for the sick were heard to 
 
The Nurse and the Medical Missionary 237 
 
 say that they would rather give their own lives than to 
 have Rachel Black die now. 
 
 Her mother brought her home, with a temperature 
 of 105. The doctor called to see her and was welcomed, 
 but no medicines were given. It was January, and Mrs. 
 Black placed her sick daughter on a couch by the open 
 window, where the cool winds could pass over her. She 
 packed her in ice, fed her nothing but blackberry juice 
 the only fruit obtainable and in ten days she had 
 the fever broken. Rachel Black was back to visit her 
 last patient before that patient again attended by 
 the old doctor was out of bed. This exhibit of the 
 efficacy of the treatment and the Christian love of the 
 nurse gained the high favor of the community, which 
 has, besides, had more than one similar experience with 
 this school group. 
 
 Something of the medical missionary work of certain 
 schools has already been mentioned in other connection, 
 and other schools have had similar experiences. Of 
 a wider nature is the work of Mr. Thomas Patrick, who 
 with his wife and two little girls, after a stay of some 
 months at the Madison School, removed to the neigh- 
 borhood of Mr. Walter's school in the Cumberlands. 
 Patrick was a pharmacist, and had had some experience 
 as a nurse in a hospital. On the broad and long expanse 
 of the plateau he found himself nearer being a physi- 
 cian than any other man there. Physicians, when 
 needed for any case, had to come up from the valley, 
 and it was with difficulty that one could be persuaded 
 to climb the steep sides of the mountain, even if he could 
 be gotten in time. 
 
 On Mr. Patrick's arrival he found Walter with a 
 wounded hand, which he dressed. This act was quickly 
 known thereabouts, and he was surprised when he went 
 abroad to be saluted as " Doctor." There came to him 
 soon after, a man who had in his spine eight open sores, 
 which had troubled him for many years, constantly dis- 
 charging pus, and causing him great pain. He had been 
 
238 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 to many doctors, and had had much treatment, but 
 without being cured. He now asked Mr. Patrick to 
 try to heal him. Patrick said that he was not a physi- 
 cian. Still the man begged him to try. He replied that 
 he did not know whether he could help him, but he did 
 know that the Great Physician could, if he would con- 
 form to his laws. So he took him in hand, cleansing the 
 sores and disinfecting them. Then he knelt down and 
 prayed for the man. 
 
 When he had risen and was about to dismiss his 
 patient, he asked him, "Do you use pork?" 
 
 "Yes," answered the man. 
 
 "You must stop eating pork, or I can't do anything 
 for you, because it pollutes your body, and is no doubt 
 partly the cause of your bad condition." 
 
 The man promised and went away and told every- 
 where about the man who made him stop eating hog 
 meat. As he continued to get better under further 
 treatments, and finally was completely cured, the peo- 
 ple gave no little heed to the idea that pork-eating 
 should be stopped. 
 
 Mr. Patrick soon found himself in demand for miles 
 about, wherever there were sick people. He had bought 
 a small place on the mountain, intending to support 
 his family from the soil, and he now had his garden 
 planted, but he could get no time to tend it. Calls came 
 from one direction and another, and soon a familiar 
 sight on the lonely mountain roads came to be this nurse, 
 going on foot from place to place to attend the sick. 
 
 The matter of a living seemed just then a serious 
 matter to Mr. and Mrs. Patrick. They had come out 
 from an affluent life, and were quite unused to the wil- 
 derness and its hardships and privations; and now how 
 they should get then* daily bread was an immediate 
 problem. Mr. Patrick never charged fees for his work: 
 he gave as freely as did the Great Physician in the days 
 of his ministry; and seldom, at first, were gifts made to 
 him. His garden grew up hi weeds, despite the best 
 
The Nurse and the Medical Missionary 239 
 
 endeavors of his wife; for every time he would set him- 
 self to garden making, a call would be sure to come from 
 some one in distress, and he could not refuse to go. 
 Nevertheless, that garden, under its weedy blanket, 
 yielded wonderfully, as well as most cultivated gardens, 
 a blessing which they took as a direct favor from the 
 Lord. And now and again, at some critical time, when 
 no dinner was in sight, some unexpected providence 
 would furnish them with bread. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Patrick continued his itinerant 
 mission to the people of the mountain. He would first 
 treat his patients for then 1 immediate pains, then he 
 would pray for them, and afterwards he would instruct 
 them in habits of right living. Always he would tell 
 them that they must stop using tobacco and liquor, 
 and he would not treat them unless they did this, be- 
 cause, he said, these are the laws of God, and it is God 
 who is doing the healing. Far more than his treatments, 
 the faith and the earnest prayer of the man impressed 
 those who came under his charge, and a great refor- 
 mation was begun. 
 
 One day, early in his experience, Mr. Patrick passed 
 by a schoolhouse out in the woods. He stopped to rest 
 and watch, and thus became acquainted with the teacher 
 and the boys and girls. Their conversation soon turned 
 to topics of health, and Mr. Patrick began to introduce 
 some thoughts of hygiene badly needed there. The 
 teacher finally invited him to come to the school and 
 teach the boys and girls, and also to teach him, so that 
 he might help his pupils. The children took great de- 
 light in the physical exercises and marches, and listened 
 with eagerness to the health principles taught. A very 
 considerable change was made in the surroundings; 
 outhouses were built where there were none before, 
 personal cleanliness became a gospel to the school, 
 and appreciation of the value of God's remedial agencies 
 fresh air, sunshine, pure water and food was brought 
 into many homes. The teacher himself became an en- 
 
240 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 thusiastic supporter and exemplar of these physical 
 truths which bear so close a relation to mental and 
 spiritual purity and health. 
 
 It was chiefly through the interest aroused in the 
 children that Mr. Patrick succeeded in founding a 
 health club composed largely of adults, a club which 
 early reached a membership of seventy-five. The mem- 
 bers of this club pledged themselves to maintain purity 
 of thought and life, and to follow a program of exercise, 
 pure food, and cleanliness. The influence of this vol- 
 untary health association, not only against the grosser 
 evils of liquor and tobacco, but upon the inner life of 
 thought and will, is an incalculable ally of truth and 
 purity. 
 
 Meanwhile, this itinerant medical evangelist goes 
 his way over the roads and trails of the mountain wil- 
 derness, seeking no gain but the blessing and happiness 
 of his fellow-men, and following far in the steps of that 
 Master who "went about doing good, and healing all 
 that were oppressed of the devil. " It is a work that is 
 yet to be imitated far and wide by those who see value 
 in the Saviour ? s methods, who are willing to sacrifice 
 themselves to the heavy work and the meager living that 
 invariably accompany the peace and joy and power 
 of the close followers of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
16 
 
" THE old education fails to reach the mountain 
 problem because it is not adapted to mountain con- 
 ditions. The kind of education needed is educa- 
 tion which shall have a larger bearing upon the life 
 which the people are to lead. The school by which 
 this education is to be provided must establish a 
 practical connection between education and work. 
 Its course of study must have to do with the in- 
 dustries of the environment." ANDREW J. RITCHIE. 
 
XXI 
 THE SCHOOLS OP GOD 
 
 GOD made the first school upon earth, which he in- 
 tended to be a model for all after schools. The 
 teachers were himself and his angels, and the pupils were 
 the first man and woman, the schoolroom was a garden, 
 and the text-books were the created things of land and 
 sea and sky. In this school, work was study, and achieve- 
 ment was the companion of study. The service which 
 man received from all creation, he repaid in service; 
 yet so evenly ran the course of nature that service was 
 not toil, and life was joyous because the powers of mind 
 and body were ever fresh and eager for use. 
 
 Sin spoiled the perfection of man's life, deranged 
 its course, and made infinitely hard its conditions; yet 
 even under the changed conditions, true education 
 still seeks to conform itself to the original plan. The 
 inability of parents may force the partial substitution 
 of other teachers, the niggardliness of nature may re- 
 quire more work for the support of life, and dulled minds 
 and depraved natures may thwart much of the Crea- 
 tor's design in study; yet the schools of God today will 
 seek the conditions and the methods of that school of 
 Eden. 
 
 At the present day, the popular system of education 
 is a child of medievalism. It has freed itself from many 
 of the shackles bound upon it by the Dark Ages, and 
 every day is struggling still clearer; yet in many of its 
 
 (243) 
 
244 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 forms and its ideals it shows its parentage and its ser- 
 vitude. In this the public mind lags behind the scholas- 
 tic mind, and it is difficult to get rid of many ideas 
 and practises which lie embedded deep in popular preju- 
 dice. Most parents of school children yet make book- 
 learning a synonym of education, and the modern 
 reforms of educational handicrafts, from sloyd to ma- 
 chine shops, are begrudged by almost a majority of 
 parents, who grumble that they can teach these things 
 to then 1 children at home. 
 
 If they could and if they had, the burden would not 
 be upon the school; but the history of the home in the 
 past century has been a history of progressive abdica- 
 tion. It has successively resigned to institutional hands, 
 to governmental hands, to ecclesiastical hands, or to 
 no hands at all, its ancient privileges of instruction in 
 arts and handicrafts, in the principles of obedience and 
 control, and in the tenets and practises of Christianity. 
 When Horace Mann began his agitation for government 
 control of child education, it was yet at a time when the 
 parent was capable, and not altogether neglectful, of 
 giving his children an education in everything but litera- 
 ture. America was a land of farms, whereon the boys 
 and girls were taught how to live practical lives, where 
 only for book knowledge was there a famine. And 
 America, despite its free thought, was a land of religion 
 in home and church. And it was a land of homes, where 
 the day saw the united efforts of family workers, and the 
 evening saw then* gatherings around the fireside, the 
 work-table, or the festive board. But with the growth 
 of commercialism, of irreligion, and of urban life, the 
 family group has been dissolving. The average home 
 today is little more than a lodging house and a restau- 
 rant. Rarely does it hear the voice of family prayer or 
 of parental instruction, seldom is it the center of com- 
 munal industry and association. It has thrown the 
 burden of the one upon the church, and of the other 
 upon the institution. And thus to thoughtful edu- 
 
The Schools of God 245 
 
 cators the state's training of the child, neglected by the 
 home and in all practical senses by the church, has be- 
 come a problem not merely of literature and science, but 
 of a fitting for complete life. And for sufficient cause they 
 have instituted reforms. 
 
 To the degree to which these reforms approach the 
 ideal of the home, God's original school pattern, they are 
 in the right direction. But that the state can ever make 
 a satisfactory substitute for the home in the complete 
 education of its children was refuted long ago by the 
 experience of old Sparta, which took the child almost 
 from the cradle, making the state his father and mother, 
 and succeeded in creating patriots but not nation- 
 builders, and by usurping the home destroyed the state. 
 
 The public teacher, with all the ability he may pos- 
 sess and all the facilities he may create, cannot take the 
 place of the parent in the home, unless he fully puts 
 himself in the place of that parent, and makes his school 
 a home. It is not possible as it is not desirable, that the 
 teacher become the parent of the community. But it 
 is possible, as it is altogether desirable, that he help the 
 parents and the homes to be all they should be to the 
 child. This is the teacher's greatest work, and success 
 in the effort will become his greatest triumph. For in 
 the restoration of the home to its prime place as a school, 
 lies the hope of the nation and of the church. That na- 
 tion which has no proper homes will cease to be a nation, 
 and that church which is not composed of Christian 
 homes is no church of Christ. 
 
 To do this work, the teacher must rely not so much 
 upon lecture as upon demonstration. He must make 
 his school a home, that it may show the home how to 
 be a school. In attempting this, he may not be able 
 to succeed wholly. Untoward circumstances or his 
 own disabilities may make his effort but partially suc- 
 cessful; yet by the degree to which he succeeds, so near 
 is he to the kingdom of heaven, so much is his school a 
 school of God. If he shows the beauty and the value 
 
246 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 of a country environment, if he establishes the dignity 
 and the joy of labor and achievement, if he inculcates 
 the virtues of obedience and good cheer, if he inspires 
 the spirit of service, he has with his students entered 
 the school where God put the first pupils of earth, and 
 where he will establish the last and everlasting university 
 of the universe. 
 
 The school, then, that seeks to do God's work will 
 be a school not merely of books, but of work and of 
 religion. This is the ideal toward which the schools of 
 the rural mission system aim. As an illustration of their 
 methods, let us take the program of the Shamrock 
 School. 
 
 It is in the early spring, and the neat white school- 
 house in the oaks up on the clay hill is making an urgent 
 call to the boys and girls of the neighborhood for a term's 
 work before they must get down to solid toil in the corn 
 fields, the tobacco patches, and the experimental gardens. 
 They come, from the youngster of six to the youth of 
 twenty, and fill the two rooms of the little schoolhouse 
 to overflowing. No tuition is required. Thus even the 
 children of the poorest are welcomed to the school. 
 Three teachers there are belonging to the schoolhouse, 
 and as many more outside, for every man and woman 
 engaged in making the living, in house, hi sawmill, or 
 on the farm, must hold himself ready to teach the younger 
 ones the things he is doing. 
 
 The morning session is literary in the main, though 
 mingled with many sounds and echoes of the industrial 
 work. Mr. Emmet, the principal, opens the day by lead- 
 ing the school in religious exercises of song and Scripture 
 reading or sometimes of Scripture recitation and 
 prayer. The Bible classes (Bible history) taught by him- 
 self and his wife, are open to all, though not obligatory, 
 and are entered by practically all the pupils. The quiet- 
 ing, steadying, character-developing influence of Bible 
 study is evident in the daily lives of the students, and 
 the leaven is observable through all the community. 
 
The Schools of God 247 
 
 The Word of God is the foundation of any stable school 
 and community, as also of the home. And not alone in 
 the Bible classes is the Scripture unfolded. Its precepts 
 are interwoven in all the instruction, and embodied hi 
 the practises of the school and the lives of the teachers. 
 There, indeed, it exerts more influence even than in the 
 spoken word. 
 
 Mrs. Emmet carries the main burden of the upper 
 classes, while her sister, Mabel Ore, is engaged with the 
 primary pupils. The literary work of the school is not 
 especially peculiar from that of other progressive schools, 
 though distinguished from many by the plentiful em- 
 ployment of illustration through charts, maps, and draw- 
 ings, and by the use of special text-books in reading and 
 science, which shun, on the one hand, the myths, fairy- 
 tales, and legends of paganism, and on the other the un- 
 truths of popular science. These teachers are Chris- 
 tians guided in their teaching by a firm and simple faith 
 in the Word of God. 
 
 But the morning hour passes, lunch time arrives 
 and is passed; then come the industrial classes. While 
 the little children, below the age of twelve, are given 
 drawing and practical, homely sloyd sewing and 
 mending, making button holes and matching the buttons 
 to them besides the more artistic basket weaving 
 and the nerve-relaxing, muscle-stretching work of car- 
 ing for the yard and the garden, the older students are 
 being trained in the higher duties of home and field. 
 The boys and young men are taken into the field and the 
 carpenter shop. They all know how to hold the plow, 
 and they may need only instruction as to the benefits 
 of deeper plowing and fertilizers and cover crops, but 
 practical work they must have in propagating, planting, 
 and pruning fruit. The plants they set are watched by 
 the class, and so far as their attendance permits are cared 
 for by them through the season; and the bearing fruit 
 trees and vines which they prune in the spring give 
 them employment in the fall in the gathering of fruit, 
 
248 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 a science in itself. They must also study live stock, 
 and the school furnishes objects for study in its sheep, 
 goats, cattle, horses, and mules. While the agriculture 
 study given them is of course elementary, it is never- 
 theless intensely practical. It is the same education 
 that the farm home used to give, with the addition of 
 some of the science which modern study has added to 
 the subject; and, primary though the study is, it is the 
 basis for a thorough work to be concluded later in the 
 agricultural college or at least conducted in the agricul- 
 tural books and papers that come to the farmer. 
 
 The carpentry work has been partly hi the shop, 
 much more fully on the buildings the cottages and the 
 barns which the school has been erecting from time to 
 time. This, too, is of the most practical nature, such as 
 the home would naturally furnish. Some fathers in some 
 homes do give this instruction, but the majority do not, 
 and in all cases the usually superior advantages of the 
 teacher make the school instruction valuable. 
 
 The first half hour of all this work is given to class 
 study, usually out of doors, under the trees, or in the 
 fields and orchards, or out hi the pasture, or at the 
 bench, or before the building. And then immediately 
 comes the practical application of the instruction. Six 
 to eight boys are usually handled by each of the men 
 teachers, and strict attention to the work in hand is 
 enforced, the same as in the schoolroom. The boys 
 are taught that this work means as much in the develop- 
 ment of mind and character, as the studies conducted 
 in the schoolroom, or possibly more. Their conversation 
 is kept upon the work they are doing, for where then- 
 words are, there then- minds will be. 
 
 The girls, meanwhile, are taken by Mrs. Emmet 
 and Mrs. Ore into the teachers' homes, and taught the 
 science of home-making. While the greater part of the 
 girls' industrial work comes in the afternoon, the neces- 
 sities of housekeeping and cooking require some work in 
 the forenoon. As with the boys, so with the girls, the 
 
The Schools of God 249 
 
 first half hour is given to the study of the work they 
 are going to do. Cooking is a daily practise, for certain 
 ones of the girls are detailed each day to get the din- 
 ner for the school family under the leadership of their 
 teachers. And practically every day there is a study in 
 the science of cooking. Charts giving food values, com- 
 position, combinations, etc., are in daily consultation, 
 as well as the cook-book; and schoolroom classes, such as 
 physiology and hygiene, drawing, and arithmetic, are 
 closely related to this cooking class. Besides, the days 
 devoted to certain industries have studies in those arts. 
 For instance, on Monday the girls study how to wash 
 before they bend over the tubs. (And incidentally, 
 they are taught that it belongs to the men to furnish 
 sufficient water, either by piping it to the house, or pump- 
 ing it up, or carrying it from the spring.) On Tuesday 
 there comes a study in ironing while the irons are reach- 
 ing the exact temperature. Another study of great im- 
 portance is housekeeping: sweeping, scrubbing, dusting, 
 and the making of beds. 
 
 The work is divided among the girls in each home. 
 One girl may have to sweep and dust, another to help 
 with the dishes, another with the washing; but during 
 the term every girl gets her experience in doing the 
 things they have had together in class study. The girl 
 who bakes bread one week has an all-day job which she 
 must attend to at intervals. The making of light bread 
 is an art highly prized, and none too common, in the 
 hills and mountains, and the girl who can carry to her 
 home the perfect art of breadmaking has brought a boon 
 into that home more prized, perhaps, by the household 
 than any other practical art. 
 
 On all these subjects, domestic, agricultural, and 
 mechanical, examinations are held periodically, the same 
 as for other studies, and the industrial branches are in 
 every way put on a par with the literary studies. 
 
 While not a few highly appreciate this kind of edu- 
 cation, there have sometimes been parents, naturally, 
 
250 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 who objected to it. They held the ancient doctrine 
 that children go to school to " learn books/' and they felt 
 that time spent in living practical life was wasted or 
 unjustly given to teachers instead of to parents. Though 
 the parent may himself be extremely impatient about 
 teaching his child these things, because he thinks the 
 child is slow and dull, or careless and indifferent, yet it 
 is hard to convince him that the teacher is giving more 
 than he gets out of the labor of the student. What every 
 industrial teacher knows as an axiom, that student la- 
 bor is unprofitable commercially, is a truth unknown 
 to some parents. But as the Shamrock School charges 
 no tuition, and attendance there is not compulsory, the 
 teachers are in a position to say that if objection is made 
 by the parent, he has the privilege of taking the child 
 out, a privilege that none so far have accepted. 
 
 A means of better reaching the parent, however, 
 with the value of this system, is found in the monthly 
 parents' meetings held at this school. Some schools 
 hold them more frequently. There the problems of the 
 home are studied, the parents' perplexities may be brought 
 forth, and instruction from the Word of God, from 
 other good books, or from the teachers' experience, 
 is applied. The betterment of the home, in material as 
 well as in social and spiritual matters, is also studied, 
 and this interchange of thought and this social contact 
 are powerful factors in uniting parents and teachers. 
 In regard to the industrial features, parents are taught 
 to see that while school and work have been popularly 
 divorced, it is in God's plan that they be closely united, 
 and that the teachers, while professing no greater ability 
 than the parents to teach the child, must nevertheless 
 unite the three features of education, piety, literature, 
 and useful labor so as to give the child a rational philoso- 
 phy of the life he is being educated to live. The home, 
 they are taught, is to be a school, and the school a home. 
 They are urged to bring into the home every element 
 of the school which they can, and thus make themselves 
 
The Schools of God 
 
 251 
 
 the teachers in greater and greater degree of their chil- 
 dren. This view appeals to the parent, the most intelli- 
 gent and the most ignorant, and the influence of this 
 teaching and practise has become very evident in the 
 community, in better and more attractive homes, and 
 hi some cases in a closer union between parent and teacher. 
 It is the ideal of the school, not to separate parent and 
 child by a gulf between learning and ignorance, but to 
 make each the helper and supporter of the other; for 
 service to the lowly as well as to the great is the maxim 
 of the kingdom of Christ. 
 
XXII 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN CHILD AND THE 
 WORLD 
 
 NARROW and broad are relative terms; and, accord- 
 ing to standard, the views of every man may be 
 either narrow or broad. In God's view we are all narrow, 
 for our knowledge is confined mostly to this round ball 
 on which we live. My nearest neighbors, indeed, dif- 
 fer from me in not believing that we live on any ball 
 whatever. They maintain, with much show of scriptural 
 authority, that the earth is flat and stationary, while 
 the sun moves around it; for does not the Bible declare 
 that the sun stood still when so commanded by Joshua? 
 Likewise, they scout much of the information I have 
 laboriously gathered from books and hearsay. They 
 refuse to believe that there is such a thing as a canni- 
 bal. Did I ever see a man eat another man? Then how 
 do I know! Who says there is no water on the moon? 
 Has any one ever journeyed there to see? Also, they be- 
 lieve in "ha'nts," and I despair of convincing them of 
 their unreality, for they would receive no testimony as 
 final save that of disembodied spirits. 
 
 Yet what right have I to call my views broad and 
 theirs narrow? If measured by the standard of the uni- 
 verse, the comparative difference in width would be 
 infinitesimal, and whether my views or my mountaineer 
 neighbors 7 would be ahead, I cannot say. The most I 
 (252) 
 
The Mountain Child and the World 253 
 
 can say is that there is a difference in direction. I may 
 consider myself capable of teaching them geography, 
 but they, on the other hand, rightly regard themselves 
 as able to instruct me in a horse deal. If I (supposedly) 
 overtop them in height of knowledge, they outdo me 
 in wealth of heart. And I believe that my only hope 
 of enriching them with knowledge is first to share, till 
 I can exceed, in the riches of love. They will listen to 
 one they love. 
 
 The mountains have all classes, rich and poor, cul- 
 tured, learned, and ignorant. When, therefore, we speak 
 of the mountain child and his relation to the world, 
 we must consider several classes. First, there are the 
 children of the wealthy, who have all the advantages, 
 not only of common education, but of travel and broad 
 social life. Their knowledge and measure of the world are 
 in no sense peculiar. Second, there are the children of 
 the cities and other communities where the schools and 
 other public utilities are the best. Whether for good or 
 ill, their advantages differ little from those of the chil- 
 dren of other sections with the same advantages. 
 
 But traveling down through a succession of less 
 favored classes, we reach the child of the isolated moun- 
 tain community, either far away in some valley or cove, 
 or up on some plateau, where the world is bounded by 
 a horizon but few miles away. To such children even 
 the blessing of literacy gives only a limited field; for the 
 figures and allusions of literature are often but dimly if 
 at all comprehensible to them. The mental life of their 
 community furnishes no stimulus to imagination, and 
 the stories of the Bible, of secular history, or of chance 
 travelers, are localized within the narrow rim of the 
 child's experience, or left altogether outside, uncompre- 
 hended. As illustrating the character of the teacher's 
 work under such conditions, we are privileged to quote 
 from a report by one of them at a convention of rural 
 school workers: 
 
 "We first met our new neighbors in a Sunday school 
 
254 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 about a mile away, and, owing to a previous introduc- 
 tion, my husband was invited to take the Bible class, 
 and the younger members were tinned over to me, and 
 I was supposed to do something with them till they 
 were through asking questions over hi the Bible class. 
 But had I stopped half an hour before, the children 
 would have waited quietly without pinching or prick- 
 ing or doing one of the many impolite things any other 
 children I ever taught would have done. 
 
 "I can hardly describe to you the difficulty I met in 
 trying to really present to them the lesson, to really bring 
 before them a mental picture of it. We were studying 
 the book of Matthew. Take, for instance, the ' Stilling 
 of the Tempest/ Saying, ' Jesus went into a boat/ 
 meant little to them. They never had seen a boat or 
 hardly heard of one. A picture would help somewhat, 
 to be sure. 'And started across the lake, when a mighty 
 storm came up/ But they have no mental picture of 
 the lake. I might say, 'Well, you've all seen a " branch," 
 and have been wading in it. Suppose it were deep enough 
 to cover these tallest pine trees and as wide as from here 
 to that far brow of the mountain. And if the water were 
 standing still, as youVe seen it in big puddles after a 
 rain, it would be a lake. When the storm raged upon 
 the lake, the water looked rough and white like the 
 "Big Falls," or like a "swillin bullin,"' a name the 
 children gave to water backed up hi the spring during 
 a heavy rain, derived, I suppose, from "swelling billows." 
 
 "And so I had to invent and contrive to make for 
 them anything of a mental picture of the lesson story. 
 But by the answers and looks of animation that crept 
 into some of the faces, I knew, in time, that I was at 
 least partly succeeding. 
 
 "Other work pressing upon us made it impossible 
 to attend this school very long, but the short connec- 
 tion with it confirmed our belief that schoolroom work 
 should be one of our first efforts. 
 
 "It was easy to find the 'work,' but where was the 
 
The Mountain Child and the World 255 
 
 'room'? After a deal of careful study of the problem, 
 we went down to the little 16 x 24 canner building by 
 the spring, nailed some boards over the most open 
 places, put in four small half-window sashes, packed 
 the canning outfit up in one corner, took down the shelf 
 used by the solderer, and put up a smaller one to be 
 used by the teacher, borrowed some wobbly benches 
 from the public school building a mile away, brought in 
 plenty of cedar and golden rod, and opened school. 
 
 "My husband had expressed some serious misgivings 
 as to the wisdom of requiring the children to use their 
 eyes in such a poorly lighted place, but we were some- 
 what encouraged to try when a young man who was 
 assisting in the preparation remarked, 'Well, one thing's 
 sure, you-all will have plenty of light in your school.' 
 Four little streams of light coming through glass into one 
 room was more than he had ever seen in that region 
 before. 
 
 " There were just six pupils enrolled that first morning, 
 besides the three little natives we then claimed as our 
 own, two of whom were too young to enter as regular 
 students. But we sang, and I believe with something 
 of the spirit and understanding, 'I'm so glad that Je- 
 sus said, Let the children come to me.' And it seemed 
 as though the birds and the breezes took up the song. 
 So the children came, until in two weeks there were 
 twenty-one enrolled, and that was the limit of accommo- 
 dation. But the spirit in which they came was the 
 notable feature. One burly little fellow who expected 
 one or two whippings a day every one of the few days 
 of public school, came there as docile as a little lamb, 
 and seemed childishly happy and contented every mo- 
 ment. Boys and girls who squirted tobacco juice right 
 and left when at home, did not soil the rough boards 
 in the canner schoolhouse, as we called it, with one little 
 drop. 
 
 "I chose for the central thought of the school work 
 or I might say for my motto ' Importance of obe- 
 
256 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 dience to law/ For I was in a community where too 
 many knew no higher law than their own caprice or the 
 tradition of their fathers. I never gave the words of 
 my text to the children, but sought to bring them fre- 
 quent illustrations, as, for instance, the many examples 
 nature was affording us at that time of year. We found, 
 by marking on the floor at noon, the point the sun 
 reached, that he was gradually traveling south, and that 
 this was his obedience to the law given him to 'be for 
 signs, for seasons, for days, and for years/ 
 
 "The teacher's shelf was filled often to overflowing 
 with things brought in by the children, as nuts, beans, 
 corn, etc., as illustrations of herbs ' bearing seed after 
 their kind, whose seed was in itself/ And in harmony 
 with a great universal law, not written in books, nor dic- 
 tated by man, every one of these, along with many ani- 
 mals and birds, were preparing for the decreed winter. 
 Disobedience to this law meant hardship, if not death. 
 
 " Because we were handling so many good things 
 to eat in our nature work, we began physiology (largely 
 oral work) with the digestive system, and discovered a 
 few simple, inexorable laws of digestion and chemistry; 
 and as we were studying the Bible by course, we came 
 in time to the giving of the law in Sinai, and a few of 
 the older ones learned the Ten Commandments, and all 
 came to enjoy that sweet hymn, 'How Gentle God's 
 Commands/ 
 
 "Thrown in parenthetically at Thanksgiving time, 
 we had an illustration of the bondage of cruel human 
 law in the story of the Pilgrims. The story was all so 
 new to them, but evidently very interesting. But it 
 was no stranger to them than facts about then* own 
 State and county. We had a simple little Thanksgiving 
 program, and the older members of our family came down 
 to help with the music. We had learned to sing 'America/ 
 so after helping us with that, they gave us 'Dixie/ but 
 even it was as new and strange to those little mountain- 
 eers as the Pilgrim story. 
 
The Mountain Child and the World 257 
 
 "In place of dictated physical culture work, they 
 sometimes played the animating game of 'dare base/ 
 which I had taught them. (They seemed to know no 
 games, had not even felt the ball craze.) We held 
 ten-minute parliamentary sessions three times a week, 
 and made our own code or rules for the game, elected 
 a secretary, and did things in a lawful manner. They 
 cleared a little place, and made careful measurements 
 for the bases. It was very interesting to note how much 
 they enjoyed being law-abiding. 
 
 "At Christmas time we prepared a little more elabo- 
 rate program, though still very simple and crude. Our 
 little room could hold no more, and so we took our organ 
 and stove, and went over to the public school building, 
 and with mistletoe and cedar, mottoes and decorations, 
 Miss W. transformed the place into a thing of beauty. 
 There were two Christmas trees, hung with candles, 
 apples, bright bags of popcorn and nuts and a few in- 
 expensive little gifts we were able to prepare, and some 
 others were brought in by the people, besides a sample 
 of canned stuff for every family in the neighborhood. 
 
 "It was really a bitter cold night, but the house was 
 full. We sent what extra clothes we could spare to 
 some of the poorer neighbors to enable them to come. 
 One flock of children came to ride over with us the 
 girls of four and six wearing old worsted basques for 
 cloaks, and with bare knees. And so they came hi all 
 kinds of apparel, and listened to every word of the pro- 
 gram with deepest interest. The faces of the parents 
 whose children took part, fairly beamed with delight. 
 It was the first experience of the kind to the children, 
 and they certainly did themselves credit. 
 
 "It seemed to me I should freeze stiff before it was 
 out, but at the close one woman said, 'I didn't think 
 about the cold. I wish it had been longer. I could sit 
 and listen to such as that all night. 7 
 
 "The wonders of that evening were talked about for 
 miles around. The strangest of all was, no one had 
 
 17 
 
258 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 gotten drunk, there was no whiskey passed around or 
 pistols shot off, and the simple little songs and poems 
 and stories of the Babe in the manger and the guiding 
 star, had touched a chord in then* souls that they en- 
 joyed having played upon. 
 
 "The home life of a large majority of these people 
 is almost a blank in the sense in which we think of the 
 word "home." In so many instances it is to them 
 merely a place where they warm themselves (one side 
 at a time), 'lay down' at night, and get something 
 to eat. 
 
 "We are instructed, when entering a field like this, 
 to ' begin by correcting the physical habits of the people/ 
 'Physical habits' must mean then 1 manner of eating, 
 sleeping, dressing, treating then- sick, and general habits 
 of home life. And we asked ourselves, 'How can we hope 
 to correct their habits along these lines? Simply to tell 
 them they are doing all these things in almost the worst 
 way, will do no good unless we provide for a better way 
 and teach it to them. 
 
 "The calls already coming opened the way for a 
 physician and a visiting nurse to deal with one phase 
 of this work, and it could be self-supporting, though 
 but little more than that. In the physiology, cooking, 
 and sewing classes, the how of the other phases could 
 be taught, but what use to teach the value of fruit as 
 an article of diet, and the best manner of preparing 
 vegetables, grains, etc., when the home larder provided 
 nothing but pork and corn meal and tea? And that 
 was often the actual condition. 
 
 "No, the school work must go farther, and teach 
 them how to make the land (and nearly every man owns 
 a good-sized farm of woodland) yield them a proper 
 dietary. 
 
 "Take, for instance, the tomato. Let it be studied 
 in the nature class from a botanical standpoint, its 
 value as a food and conditions of growth considered, 
 hot-beds made and seeds planted by the students, and 
 
The Mountain Child and the World 259 
 
 a piece of ground properly prepared and some plants 
 set on the school farm; but also let each student have 
 a piece of ground at home which he prepares just as 
 the class do the one at school, and then give or sell him 
 at a low price, plants enough to set his land. The 
 teacher ought to be free to visit these gardens often. 
 When the crop matures let the school canner can his 
 fruit on shares. He then has one healthful thing put 
 away for winter. If he grows more than he can use, 
 the canner may sell the surplus for him, and the teacher 
 in nearly every instance can control the use of the 
 money, especially if he requires the pupil to keep 
 a ' Garden Book/ and is teaching, as may be done even 
 in the lowest grades, the keeping of simple accounts. 
 The money will be spent for books, clothes, etc., rather 
 than for tobacco. Other fruits and vegetables could be 
 dealt with in a similar manner. The school farm and 
 canner must help in 'correcting the physical habits/ 
 
 "In spite of all the difficulties, the work there has 
 steadily won the interest and confidence of those dear 
 superstitious, tradition-ridden, hospitable people. I 
 have never worked among a class more needy, but at 
 the same time one which yielded better results for a given 
 expenditure of energy and material. They have a la- 
 tent love of the beautiful and appreciation of what counts 
 for the highest and best in life; and in spite of then- 
 poor English, their tobacco-stained faces, and then 1 un- 
 couth garb, they possess a true refinement which might 
 silence any boasting of superiority from the average 
 well-dressed city boy and girl, or man and woman. 
 These mountain brothers and sisters of ours are true 
 Americans, independent and highly sensitive to any 
 suggestions of non-equality." 
 
 Many, though not all, of the rural mission schools 
 are operating under somewhat similar conditions. The 
 work of a teacher in such a case is the most delicate 
 given to men. His must be a nice touch, a sensitive per- 
 ception. To enlighten and broaden without wounding, 
 
260 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 to inspire and lead to higher things while still keeping 
 in contact with the conditions and the needs about 
 him, is an accomplishment for which only the wisdom 
 of the Master Teacher is sufficient. But the teachers' 
 hearts are cheered with a sight of the results. Some of 
 the North Carolina schools can point with satisfaction 
 to graduates in various occupations, from farmers and 
 mechanics to ministers and physicians. One is a mis- 
 sionary in Africa. The first of the Madison out-schools, 
 the Oak Grove School, though but a few years old, 
 numbers among its graduates several teachers. One of 
 them a fine, manly young fellow has been for several 
 years principal of a graded school in the valley. He 
 came at the first session of Mr. Alden's school, knowing 
 nothing of grammar and not so much as common frac- 
 tions in arithmetic. His mental progress was rapid, but 
 his advance in moral and religious matters was most 
 interesting. Early in his school life he was introduced, 
 as are all the older pupils, to the custom of occasionally 
 leading the school hi its devotional exercises. The natu- 
 ral reverence of the hill child deepened in him, and though 
 he was undemonstrative, and therefore not specially 
 a leader hi the church, his sturdiness of character was 
 recognized throughout the community, and he was a 
 silent power for good. 
 
 But one habit, which seemed ineradicable, troubled 
 his conscience. He had used tobacco from his early 
 childhood, and though thoroughly convinced from the 
 studies hi the school that it was doing him harm bodily 
 and mentally, and though he tried various plans to 
 rid himself of it tapering off, and using anti-tobacco 
 remedies he could not cure himself. He finally began 
 teaching in the valley, and, determined to make him- 
 self an example to his pupils, he began a rigid limiting 
 of his allowance, till at Christmas time he was down to 
 "three chews a week." But he could get no further, 
 and came in great distress to Mr. Alden, who had now 
 been laboring with him especially for two years to give 
 
The Mountain Child and the World 261 
 
 up his tobacco. Mr. Alden told him he could not do 
 it by degrees, nor by his own strength; he must settle 
 the matter by prayer, and then take the plug he was 
 chewing and throw it away forever. The young man 
 followed the advice to the letter. He was plowing in 
 the field at home the next day, and suddenly coming 
 to the resolution, he threw himself on his knees by his 
 plow, and prayed for deliverance. Then he rose, took 
 his plug from his pocket, and threw it as far as he could. 
 His taste for tobacco left him that moment, and he has 
 been free ever since. His activity in religious matters 
 has greatly increased. He is now not only a leader in 
 the Sunday school, but in the prayer-meeting, while 
 pushing on in his profession and winning golden opinions 
 from his educational superiors. 
 
 The teachers who take such boys from the pit wherein 
 they have been mired, see in such victories an evidence 
 of spiritual as well as of physical progress. The one who 
 begins a " spiritual" life with the handicap of evil 
 physical habits will have a hard time to maintain spiri- 
 tuality. The farther, the faster he overcomes physical 
 evil, the more rapidly do his conception of truth and 
 his living of truth progress. Every victory gained, 
 every step forward, is so much more received of the 
 character of Christ, and if that course is unfalteringly 
 pursued, it will end in the imprint of the seal of God 
 upon a perfect character. 
 
XXIII 
 
 VICE AND VICTORY 
 
 THE main purpose of the Christian school, in its work 
 both for the children and for the grown people of 
 the community, is to lift to a higher life in body and mind, 
 It seeks by teaching and inspiration to rid the people 
 of vices great and small, that they may become true Chris- 
 tians and earnest workers for Christ. In the mountain 
 and hill schools the great and almost universal vice is 
 the use of tobacco, especially in its two most loath- 
 some forms, chewing and snuff-dipping. The extent to 
 which this habit dwarfs and stupefies the mind is re- 
 sponsible for not a little of the backwardness and the 
 blunted moral sense with which the teacher has to deal. 
 Little boys six and eight years old not infrequently are 
 found with the quid puffing out their lean cheeks, and 
 little girls of as tender age are proud to hold the snuff- 
 stick between their stained lips. 
 
 The standard is, indeed, rising, and in many commu- 
 nities women who are desirous of social respect are 
 ashamed of the habit of snuff-dipping, while men are 
 making the dubious advance of substituting the cigarette 
 for the plug; but as yet in the outskirts of the moun- 
 tain country this is not so, and the teaching that tobacco 
 is bad comes as a curious doctrine to many a mountain- 
 eer who, even when a willing disciple, often needs 
 continual instruction and correction. To the Eden Val- 
 (262) 
 
Vice and Victory 263 
 
 ley School, hidden behind the high mountains of a 
 North Carolina district, came a man with his family 
 from an adjoining county, who from reading had begun 
 to keep the Sabbath. There had been many things 
 to teach him, and little time for instruction, but he 
 was watching for every point of faith and practise that 
 he could find. On Sabbath, when Mr. Nelson with his 
 wife went down to this man's house on the lower part 
 of the school farm, the new convert offered him a pipe. 
 Mr. Nelson quietly refused, with thanks, and the man, 
 wondering within himself, concluded that it was not 
 right to smoke on Sabbath. He himself therefore re- 
 frained during the day, but as soon as the sun went 
 down, he got out his pipe and began to smoke. Again 
 he offered the visitor tobacco, but this time was informed 
 that Adventists never used it. In a few words answers 
 were given to his questions, and, convinced that tobacco 
 was harniful, he immediately threw his into the fire, as 
 his wife did her snuff, and thereafter they did not 
 touch the weed. 
 
 It has been a question with the teachers in the hill 
 schools exactly what position they ought to take in re- 
 gard to the use of tobacco by their pupils. On the one 
 hand, the injury to mind and body, and the nauseous 
 character of the habit, incline the teacher absolutely 
 to prohibit it; on the other hand, too early and abrupt 
 a prohibition might result in turning away unreformed 
 many a pupil who by more gradual means could be re- 
 claimed. It has therefore been the more general prac- 
 tise to prohibit the use of tobacco within the schoolhouse, 
 appealing therein to the students' sense of cleanliness and 
 desire to progress, while leaving its use on the school 
 grounds and elsewhere to be affected by the studies of 
 the school in physiology, hygiene, and moral laws. 
 
 At the Eden Valley School, which shares with few 
 others the distinction of ministering to the most isolated 
 and unprivileged classes, the beautiful new school- 
 house, clean and attractive, with its white walls artis- 
 
264 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 tically relieved by pictures, maps, and the drawing and 
 sloyd work of the school, there is a resistless esthetic 
 appeal to the children who come many of them 
 from dingy, crowded, and unlovely homes. Though 
 on the school grounds at recess, or in the afternoon in- 
 dustrial classes, there may here and there be detected on 
 children's breaths the unspeakable stench of the mo- 
 lasses-filled " store plug," or the less offensive smell 
 of the home "dry twist," in the schoolroom there is 
 never spot nor stain from the unhallowed thing. 
 
 At the infrequent times when the school entertains 
 a visitor from the outside world, and he is announced 
 to speak publicly, the news, carried far and wide by the 
 children, fills the big main room of the schoolhouse to 
 its fullest capacity, with eager, open-eyed children, 
 with parents slower of motion and duller of eye, along 
 with the groups of swaggering youth and shy-faced 
 maidens inevitable in every rural community. But 
 though in then* own church and social gatherings the 
 older ones are used to the free exercise of the right of 
 expectoration, and sometimes to regular journeyings 
 of the whiskey-bottle, the firing of guns outside, and a 
 few private or free-for-all fights, up here at the "school 
 on the hill" they are as well behaved, attentive, and cour- 
 teous, as at the best-ordered Episcopal service in the 
 city, and not a sight and scarcely a smell of tobacco is 
 to be found. The influence of the school, its principles 
 and its practise, is telling. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Arthur, the teachers, tell of this one 
 and that one and the other, five or six in all, who during 
 the year have quietly forsaken the habit of tobacco- 
 using, constantly swelling the numbers of the band of 
 defenders around the school principles. These principles, 
 given in precept in the schoolroom, and reinforced and 
 exemplified in the students' life with the teachers in 
 home, field, and woods for all the local as well as 
 boarding students take the industrial classes in the after- 
 noon are setting before them ideals of life that lift 
 
Vice and Victory 265 
 
 them above the sordid pleasures symbolized by the 
 birch twig and the tin tag. 
 
 While the Visitor was there, one evening there came 
 in the mail from a Chicago friend a postal order for two 
 dollars, with the explanation that it was " bribe money." 
 This suggestion of Chicago graft at work so far from 
 home interested the Visitor, who straightway made in- 
 quiry as to the nature of the bribes. Nurse Bryan 
 explained that the term was coined hi Chicago to fit 
 her description of Mis' Margaret's operations on the to- 
 bacco problem. 
 
 One little eight-year-old boy, a " woods-colt," who 
 had found refuge in the " school on the hill" from the 
 taunts of his child companions, was beggarly furnished 
 with shoes and hat. The mud and water oozed in through 
 his broken soles, while his old felt hat served less to 
 cover his red thatched head than to hide his blue eyes. 
 Mis' Margaret found means to supply the needed ar- 
 ticles from the stock of " imported goods" and from 
 her own meager purse, and the little fellow thereafter, 
 with dog-like devotion, trod in her foot-prints, with an 
 eye for every little personal service he could discover. 
 His grateful devotion was touching; and it sprung an 
 idea into Mis' Margaret's head. From his mother no 
 less than from his companions he had learned to chew, 
 and the quid was seldom absent from his mouth outside 
 school hours. 
 
 " Henry," said Mis' Margaret one day, "do you want 
 to do something that would please me very much?" 
 
 "Sure I will, Mis' Margaret," was his ready response. 
 
 "Then promise me never to use tobacco any more." 
 
 It was a request for half his kingdom; but he had 
 given the word of a king. The struggle was short. He 
 knew the principle of the thing; the school had taught 
 him the harm of tobacco; but he had grown up with it, 
 and never yet had found his boyish stock of courage 
 great enough to throw it away. Now his blue eyes 
 shifted from Mis' Margaret's face, wandered down the hill, 
 
266 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 across the valley, and away to the far-off heights. Be- 
 fore his eyes, perhaps, stood out the motto on the school- 
 room wall, "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence 
 cometh my help." From those far hills, at least, his 
 gaze came back to the eyes of his teacher. It was only a 
 minute before he said, simply, "I will, Mis' Margaret." 
 Slowly he drew the "dry twist" from his pocket, and with 
 a quick fling sent it spinning down the steep hill. He 
 did not touch tobacco after that. 
 
 When he went home and told his mother what he 
 had promised, there was another convert; for, as she 
 afterwards told the teacher, "I thought that if Henry 
 was a-goin' to fight that fight, he couldn't see me around 
 dippin' an' chewin'. His mother ain't a-goin' to be a 
 millstone hangin' round his neck." Girl victim of man's 
 passion and cowardice though she had been, and slave 
 besides to the most nauseous of vices, she had played 
 a mother's part to this boy of hers as best she knew 
 how, and now she answered the next appeal to her mother- 
 hood, and stepped one step higher with her son. 
 
 Another little chap there was in the school whom 
 ordinary bribes would not affect. His mother, though 
 she herself used snuff, had offered to get him a new pan* 
 of shoes if he would quit chewing; and his uncle promised 
 him a flour-sack full of candy. But he shook his head; 
 he loved his plug. 
 
 But he also loved music. He had a rare talent, 
 indeed, for it; and voice or organ, but especially piano, 
 would charm him almost into heaven. He knew by 
 heart half a hundred songs, and his voice rang out the 
 cheeriest in the morning exercises of the school. One 
 day, after school, he was telling his teacher of the bribes 
 his relatives had offered him, and of then- failure. 
 
 "I'll tell you what I'll give you, Charley, if you'll 
 quit tobacco," said Mis' Margaret. 
 
 "What?" And the shrewd speculation of the moun- 
 taineer showed in his eyes. 
 
 "I'll teach you to play the piano," she said. 
 
Vice and Victory 267 
 
 "Will you?" His voice rang with pleasure; but im- 
 mediately it changed to a note of doubt, "I don't 
 reckon I could stick," he said. 
 
 "You think it over, Charley, and whenever you 
 get ready, let me know. Whenever you have let tobacco 
 alone for a day, come and tell me, and I will give you a 
 lesson that very night," she promised. 
 
 But he did not come that evening. He slipped away 
 without being seen. The next day he kept out of the 
 way of any conversation or inquiry, and the teacher 
 wondered if he had taken up the gage of battle at all. 
 But that evening he came to her with shining eyes. 
 
 "I get my lesson tonight, Mis' Margaret," he said. 
 "I would of last night; I pretty near did it. But you 
 know when I go out to the well for a drink, I always 
 take a chew, and yesterday evening, when I let down the 
 bucket, it kind of slipped into my mouth before I thought. 
 I hit him a lick today, though. Hain't touched it, and 
 it's right there," hitting his hip pocket with an em- 
 phatic hand. "It'll stay there till I've forgotten it, 
 too." 
 
 His mother said to him afterwards, "Charlie, why 
 didn't you give up tobacco when your uncle offered 
 you a sack full of candy?" 
 
 He replied, "I reckoned it wouldn't last very long." 
 
 "Why did you do it, then," she pursued, "for the 
 music lessons?" 
 
 And the young philosopher answered, "I reckoned 
 they'd last as long as I would." 
 
 Four months had passed when the Visitor heard 
 this tale; and parents and friends all testified to the fact 
 that Charley had never taken a chew since. And prob- 
 ably he had "forgotten it," as his hip pocket no longer 
 bulged, and he was becoming an accomplished pianist. 
 
 But the tobacco habit is only one of the vices against 
 which the schools are striving, and from which they are 
 endeavoring to uplift their children with the parents. 
 The lax moral conditions prevailing in some places 
 
268 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 are responsible for a degree of misery and degradation 
 that goes beyond any other trouble. 
 
 Let it not be understood, here, that the South is 
 peculiar in having these conditions. Indeed, after 
 careful and somewhat extensive observation and in- 
 quiry, the belief has grown that the sins of impurity 
 are less prevalent in the mountains than in more so- 
 phisticated communities. But they show more in open 
 than in secret vice, and in the general society rather 
 than in a segregated class. And further, this peculiarity 
 will be noticed in the rural white South: that a highly 
 moral community may be located only a few miles from 
 a notoriously immoral community, a peculiarity due 
 sometimes to the boundaries fixed by mountains and 
 hills, and always to the smaller degree of travel and 
 mingling of communities with one another. Thus, a 
 community which has the benefit of a good ancestry 
 of high principles, is likely to keep that high moral tone, 
 and vice versa; whereas in the North the greater amount 
 of travel and commingling of peoples tends to make 
 nearly a dead level. 
 
 Take, then, from the shady side of the mountain, 
 two stories of needs and ministry, stories exceptional and 
 extreme in their showing of hard conditions, but no wise 
 extreme nor exceptional in their bright promise of re- 
 ward. 
 
 In the neighborhood of Mr. and Mrs. Short, at the 
 Long Trail School in the Cumberlands, lived three lit- 
 tle children, the illegitimate offspring of a man who had 
 held a high place in the mountain community. He 
 had been assassinated a year or two before, and now the 
 children's mother, dying, left them to the care of an 
 older half-brother. He, however, was as unwilling to 
 care for them as he was incapable. He took them, 
 however, into a cabin with him. The two older children 
 were girls, eleven and nine years of age; the youngest, 
 a boy of seven. 
 
 One day the Shorts heard from a neighbor that the 
 
Vice and Victory 269 
 
 little boy, David, was dead had died a day or two be- 
 fore. They went over to the place to see if they could 
 be of help. The cabin was closed, with no sign of life, 
 and all their pounding and calling brought no response. 
 But looking in at a hole near the chimney, Mr. Short 
 spied two shod feet protruding from the bed, and with 
 this advantage he succeeded in arousing the owner 
 (the half-brother) and in bringing him to the door. 
 They asked if it was true that David was dead. 
 
 "Dead!" he echoed, "yes, he was dead dead 
 drunk!" 
 
 Then they had the story. The boy had gotten his 
 brother's whiskey bottle, and drunk a whole quart of the 
 poison; and when his sisters found him he was uncon- 
 cious, scarcely breathing, his head lolling, helplessly 
 drunk, and in danger of death. The girls dragged the 
 little fellow out to the road, in a frightened effort to re- 
 vive him. They dashed cold water over him, and tried 
 to waken him, but not until ten hours had passed did 
 he regain consciousness. He was now, however, nearly 
 recovered from his debauch. 
 
 To save the children, Mr. and Mrs. Short considered 
 taking them into their own home, but they found the 
 relatives ill-disposed to permit this. The clan was large, 
 and some of them in good circumstances and of fair 
 culture; but none of them wished to take the children 
 so illy bred and nurtured into their own homes, yet 
 their pride revolted at the thought of strangers 7 giving 
 them charity. 
 
 Christmas time came. At the Shorts', there was 
 discussed between the parents and the children how the 
 Jones children's lives might be brightened a little. Should 
 they have a Christmas tree? Oh, yes! and Katherine 
 and Charlotte would give them their own dolls and rib- 
 bons and other presents. Christmas day they loaded 
 a wagon with a tree and presents, covered them with 
 a canvass, and drove over to the home of the waifs. 
 It was a new, two-room house the older brother had just 
 
270 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 erected out of green lumber, and there were now wide 
 cracks between the upright boards. The children were 
 alone within, trying to keep warm around a coverless 
 stove. They were inveigled outside and away by some 
 of their visitors, while the older people took the tree in, 
 set it up, decorated it with strings of popcorn and bright 
 paper, and hung the presents upon it. Then the chil- 
 dren were brought in again, and then* eyes opened 
 wide with astonishment. 
 
 "We tried to keep awake all last night," they said, 
 "to see if 'They' would bring us a doll, but 'They' 
 didn't bring anything." And they fingered with some 
 misgiving mingling with then 1 delight, the first dolls and 
 Teddy-bear they had ever owned. With the wagon they 
 all went out and brought up a load of dry wood to 
 warm them as well as might be. And then they were 
 left alone with the tree. 
 
 A week later they began to come to school, the first 
 they had ever attended. They were delighted with it, 
 especially the dinner part, a part which they found by 
 persistent venturing into the teachers' home at the 
 proper hour, and which they took to be a legitimate 
 feature of the free school. 
 
 In the midst of winter as it was, the girls were wear- 
 ing only a single garment, a thin dress, the boy a waist 
 and a pan* of knee pants, both in tatters, so that his skin 
 showed through in strips. All were barefooted. Some 
 new clothes "imported goods" were provided for 
 them, but it was ordained that they must first be 
 bathed. They were brought over from the school, 
 one by one. The girls willingly took their baths before 
 they donned then 1 new clothes; but the boy, no! After 
 a while they succeeded in getting his rags off, but he 
 persistently refused to be wet with water. Even a cellu- 
 loid duck plunged into the tub gave him no reassur- 
 ance. Then his sisters, who, bathed and clothed, were 
 hi the schoolroom, were successively sent for, but they 
 could not succeed with him. 
 
Vice and Victory 271 
 
 They showed him his nice new clothes. "Oh, I 
 want those clothes so much," he would say, but he would 
 not get into the bath. At last they did induce him to 
 put one foot in, but he immediately jerked it out; and 
 that was all the bath he got the first time. He got the 
 clothes. 
 
 Soon after, the clan became more generally disposed 
 to turn the children over to the school people, and they 
 were taken into the Short's home. Again the battle with 
 the bath was on with David, "I ain't goin' to take no 
 bath!" he announced with decision. Mr. Short said 
 nothing, but to clean the boy's head he doused it with 
 creoline, and then "Oh, David, your shoulders are 
 wet with this creoline. You'll have to have it washed 
 off." 
 
 "Yes," he said, with interest, "it's rainin' down," 
 and with no protest he was set into the tub. There, 
 after the first gasp, he sat splashing, and shortly began 
 to say, "Oh, I do like a bath! I do like a bath so!" 
 an expression iterated for the next half hour over new 
 clothes, new apron, and so on. And soon the bath 
 hour came to be one of his chief delights. 
 
 The head cleaning was no small affair. The hair 
 of all the children was matted with nits and alive with 
 lice. There were great sores and patches of loose skin 
 which served as hiding places for the vermin. The two 
 younger ones had to have their hair clipped close, but the 
 older girl begged so hard of Mrs. Short to have "nice 
 hair like yours," that an effort was made to save it. Mrs. 
 Short and a friend worked for hours on it. It was greased, 
 soaked with creoline, and carefully, very carefully 
 combed, the vermin being destroyed as fast as they fell. 
 But her raw, sore head caused her great pain, careful 
 as they might be. 
 
 "Susie," said Mrs. Short, "you will have to let me 
 cut it." 
 
 But she said, "Oh no, no; I can stand it. Do go on! 
 I'll stand anything if I can only be somebody! 1 ' And so 
 
272 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 they worked for five solid hours, till midnight, and saved 
 the hair that was to her the badge of being somebody! 
 
 Those children came into that home having no 
 real knowledge of God or of prayer, having no clear con- 
 ception of correct behavior at table or elsewhere, their 
 young minds besmirched and besotted with bestial ideas. 
 They remained nearly a year, fathered and mothered 
 equally with the own children of that home; they learned 
 to love their Jesus and to pray to him in a quaint, origi- 
 nal way that was the soul of sincerity, and which time 
 and again brought tears to the eyes of their benefactors. 
 They became well behaved and well mannered, their 
 minds were purified, brightened; and the time finally 
 came when some of their relatives, in one of the largest 
 cities of the South, were glad to open their doors to this 
 trio, rescued and prepared for a higher life. 
 
 The teaching of the schools is to the end that those 
 who are helped shall themselves become helpers. Noth- 
 ing can so rejoice the heart of the teacher as the sight of 
 those whom he has helped turning with the true spirit 
 of Christ to the rescue and uplifting of others. When 
 his young men and women, saved from debasing habits 
 and trained in truth and purity, become the instructors 
 of other boys and girls; when families in his community 
 freed from the filth and stupor of tobacco and the craze 
 of liquor, freed from the pains of dyspepsia and rheu- 
 matism and boils and eczema by radical changes in diet 
 and manner of living when these become messengers 
 of light and blessing to others in the community and 
 outside; when children and youth, standing on higher 
 planes of living, reach down helping hands to those who 
 have not yet responded, and whom none but themselves 
 can help so well; that, all that, becomes a reward in 
 comparison with which the highest salary and the most 
 honored position in the world are as nothing. This ex- 
 perience is one in which every member in the self-sup- 
 porting workers has had a part. 
 
 There was in the neighborhood of the Pine Knot 
 
Vice and Victory 273 
 
 School a family composed of a decrepit father, four 
 grown boys, and a fourteen-year-old girl, the youngest of 
 them all. The mother was dead; and the girl, Anna, 
 had never had any instruction in housekeeping, and 
 scarcely in cooking. The family never sat down to meals 
 together; they took their food from the pot and the 
 bake-kettle on the hearth, and ate as time and fortune 
 favored them, by the fireplace or on their way to the 
 field. The- house was unkempt and dirty. Outside, the 
 farm was in keeping with the house. The rail fences 
 were down and weeds and briers covered the field. The 
 girl seemed to her brothers not as a sister, but as one of 
 themselves, and she, as well as they, was called upon for 
 field work. 
 
 This girl, along with others, came to the school, but 
 for two years she seemed incapable of making progress. 
 Her dress gotten however she might get it was 
 ill-fitting, torn, and buttonless. Her hair was un- 
 combed, and she had often to be sent out to wash 
 her face and hands. Mrs. Winthrop and others of 
 the ladies went tune and again to her home to clean 
 it and teach her how to make and mend her clothes 
 and those of her brothers. But very soon things would 
 be almost as bad as before. For two years this went 
 on, and the school workers almost despaired of making 
 her better. 
 
 But at the end of the two years, suddenly there 
 seemed to come an awakening. She came to school 
 neat and tidy, her dresses she kept in repair, and visits 
 to her home revealed the fact that the lessons taught 
 her had at last borne fruit. The home began to be trans- 
 formed, and the girl herself blossomed into womanhood 
 like a flower from a dull weed. Her brothers opened 
 their eyes at her in astonishment. For the first time they 
 seemed to realize that they had a sister, and what a sis- 
 ter meant to them. They began to take pride in her, to 
 give her little presents, and to help her make the home 
 a home. The reform began outside as well, and the farm 
 
 18 
 
274 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 began to look up. The change in the family, begun in 
 the girl, was marvelous and complete. 
 
 Some time after this transformation began to take 
 place, a younger girl, a neighbor, came up to Anna's 
 house one morning. She was much such a girl as Anna 
 had been, dirty, ragged, and untidy. Anna looked 
 upon her with the eyes of a new apostle. 
 
 "Dolly," she said, "I'm going over to Aunt Belle's 
 this afternoon. Wouldn't you like to go with me?' 7 
 
 "Yes," said Dolly. 
 
 "Then let me help you slick up, and I'll take you." 
 
 She took off Dolly's dirty and torn dress, putting 
 one of her own new ones upon her while she washed the 
 other. She gave Dolly a bath, scrubbed her face and 
 hands, and combed her hair. Then she ironed Dolly's 
 dress. But it was torn in several places. Where she 
 could, she caught the edges together, but there was one 
 rent too big to be spanned without a patch. And though 
 she searched her small house over, she could find nothing 
 to make a proper patch. All she had was a clean flour 
 sack she had dusted and washed. And since she had 
 nothing better she took the white flour sack and made 
 a patch on the little pink dress. Then they went together 
 over to Aunt Belle's. 
 
 Anna saw her aunt looking with curiosity at the trans- 
 formation in the neighbor girl, and supposing she was 
 taking special note of the flour-sack patch, she said, 
 "It was all I had. I did the best I could." 
 
 But there were other thoughts in her aunt's mind. 
 "Anna," said she, "how did you come to do all that for 
 Dolly?" 
 
 "Why," answered the girl, "I was helped: why 
 shouldn't I help others?" It was a hill girl's simple 
 expression of Christianity's deepest principle: salvation 
 for service. 
 
 Her home became neat and tidy; on the farm the 
 fences were built up and the fields were cleaner. Pros- 
 perity attended the work of this girl and her brothers. 
 
Vice and Victory 
 
 275 
 
 Her father died. She developed into a good woman. 
 From this poor hill cabin, from a flour-sack patch, she 
 came to be a young woman who would not become 
 conspicuous because of dress on the boulevards of Nash- 
 ville. And holding still that idea, "I was helped: why 
 shouldn't I help others?" she developed into a true 
 womanhood, a helper indeed among others. 
 
 Well is it said that this work "will have a far stronger 
 influence for good than the preaching of sermons." Let 
 the Christian worker show the life that is within him 
 by his practical ministry, and the ranks of the Lord's 
 army will continually be swelled by the new recruits 
 he thus creates. 
 
" THE temple of knowledge is not to be found by 
 searching through far lands; it stands here at our 
 hand. Nor are the great men and the leaders to 
 come mysteriously from some distant place; they 
 are here at our doors, pleading for a chance." 
 MARTHA BERRY. 
 
XXIV 
 
 WHOSOEVER IS NOT AGAINST US 
 
 JOHN, the "Son of Thunder ," one day with some 
 of his fellow disciples came upon a scene such as they 
 were accustomed to associate with only their Master 
 and themselves. They saw a man casting out demons. 
 Whether they knew anything of the case, how much 
 and how long the man had suffered, how worthy or un- 
 worthy was the healer, we are not told. But their 
 spirit is manifest in John's report to Jesus. "We saw 
 one casting out demons in thy name," he said, "and we 
 forbade him, because he followeth not us." They did 
 not think of the relief and joy of the healed demoniac, 
 they did not think that Jesus' fame and power were 
 being spread through others; they felt only jealousy 
 that one not named or associated with themselves 
 should presume to do the work they were doing. These 
 others, they assumed, could not accomplish their mission, 
 could not rightly represent their Master. They were 
 specially privileged, they believed themselves therefore 
 specially capable, and they did not intend to sanction 
 usurpation of their place and work by any other. 
 
 But Jesus rebuked their action and their policy. 
 "Forbid him not," he said, "for he that is not against 
 us is for us." The disciple who gets Christ's attitude 
 will be a ready worker with all forces for good. In the 
 world, and in other churches than his own, he will find 
 
 (279) 
 
280 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 men and women giving their lives to the betterment of 
 their fellow-men, some in one way, some in another. 
 Some he will find have grasped Christ's conception of 
 the kingdom, working to persuade men to enter therein; 
 others have dimmer views, and while zealous to procure 
 good works in men, and church, and state, try largely 
 the force of law and legal combinations. With all, the 
 true disciple of Christ can and will show an open-minded 
 helpfulness, giving to each the full measure of his strength 
 and cheer so far as he can go with them. He will be no 
 narrow sectary, requiring the brand of a particular 
 sect or society on any work in which he is to engage, 
 and withholding his sanction and cooperation because 
 he fears he may be swept from his moorings. He can 
 cheer on the prohibition movement, though he does 
 not believe that law will conquer the liquor habit; and 
 meanwhile he can put forth his strongest efforts to 
 educate for temperance. He can aline himself with those 
 who are fighting the social evil, though he may not 
 believe that prostitution is completely curable by either 
 law or economic improvement; and he can at the same 
 time be devoting himself to the inculcation of personal 
 purity and the upbuilding of the home. He can add his 
 efforts to the efforts of those who are struggling to banish 
 illiteracy, though he may differ with them as to some of 
 the agencies used. And he can join the Christian worker 
 who is seeking to bring righteousness into churches and 
 communities, by preaching, and praying, and personal 
 work, though he may not sanction all the doctrines ad- 
 vanced nor the methods used. And in all this work he 
 can and must retain his personal connection with God, 
 and receive wisdom from on high that he may neither 
 betray his sacred trust of truth nor offend his fellows by 
 a parade of his peculiarities. He can be made, as Paul de- 
 clared himself to be, "all things to all men," and a co- 
 worker with all the good. 
 
 It is the peculiar temptation of a people who have 
 radical differences from other peoples, and who especially 
 
Whosoever Is Not Against Us 281 
 
 are fearful of losing their children and perhaps themselves 
 out of their communion, to isolate themselves and associ- 
 ate only with one another. Thus did the Jews in then- 
 late national history, in order to avoid the backslidings 
 and apostasies of their early experience. And by this 
 means they built up a middle wall of partition between 
 them and the Gentiles to whom they were meant to be 
 lightbearers. Some of them were indeed active enough in 
 proselyting among the Gentiles, but so narrow and dis- 
 torted had become their religion, largely because of their 
 exclusiveness, that Jesus declared they made every 
 proselyte "twofold more the child of hell" than them- 
 selves. They lacked the inner power which comes from 
 communion with God, and which is the protection of the 
 Christian against the influences which he meets in his 
 intercourse with men. Lacking this, they sought to 
 supply a defense by those walls of partition, first between 
 Jews and Gentiles, then between the rich and the poor, 
 and last the highest step of holiness between their 
 strictest sects, like the Pharisees, and the masses of the 
 people. The result was an ecclesiastical haughtiness, 
 a formal religion, a spiritual death, a failure in their 
 mission to the world, and finally, a rejection of their 
 God and Saviour. 
 
 Thus will it be today with any people who repeat 
 their course. So long as the battle rages between God 
 and the devil, so long must the soldiers of Christ encoun- 
 ter the world. Failure to do so is cowardice and deser- 
 tion. The only safety is not in shirking the battle, 
 but in being armed with the armor of God. Christians 
 trained in the truth of God and having a personal con- 
 nection with him, will retain their faith and love, though 
 assailed by all the temptations to which their mingling 
 with the world subjects them. "I pray not," cried Jesus 
 to his Father, "that thou shouldest take them out of 
 the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the 
 evil." Following then* Master, Christians today will 
 give themselves whole-heartedly to the service of man- 
 
282 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 kind, and will with gladness cooperate with all whom 
 they touch and whom they prove worthy of Christian 
 fellowship, be they of whatever name or Christian 
 cause. The only ones who think all the good is in then- 
 own church are those who have never worked outside. 
 
 None have greater opportunity for this cooperative 
 service than the rural mission school workers. Situated, 
 for the most part, far from other churches or members 
 of their own denomination, they are the more keenly 
 alive to the influences for good manifested in other 
 churches and individuals. Holding with the utmost 
 earnestness the belief that the second coming of Christ 
 is very near, and that preparation for his coming in- 
 volves a very definite reform on many points not recog- 
 nized by some of the churches, they nevertheless welcome 
 the cooperation of all agencies which, though failing 
 to stand on their own platform, yet aim at the bet- 
 terment of society and the salvation of men. They recog- 
 nize the splendid service given in the field they are 
 entering, by individuals and organizations which have 
 preceded them, a service far more extended and better 
 developed than their own now is or may ever be; and they 
 esteem the earnest efforts of members of the communities 
 of which they have become a part to lift higher the 
 standard of morality, education, and efficiency. 
 
 Thus it is their aim to cooperate with all who will 
 receive their aid in any of their manifold channels of 
 service. Nearly all the groups of these workers are mem- 
 bers and workers in Sunday schools, several of which 
 they have organized where there were none before. 
 Free ministry to the sick is always one of their chief 
 cares, and out of their poverty they have created the 
 means of helping the poor, in clothing and sometimes 
 in food and shelter, in this uniting with those of the com- 
 munity who are able and willing to dispense charity. 
 To the upbuilding of the agricultural work they have 
 contributed their help. One school led the neighbors 
 hi the purchase of a community-owned rock-crusher, 
 
Whosoever Is Not Against Us 283 
 
 to furnish crushed limestone for the soil. Several have 
 been leaders in the development of new and valuable 
 money crops, to take the place of tobacco or less prof- 
 itable products. All have taken an interest in local 
 agricultural movements whether organized or unorgan- 
 ized. 
 
 One school in middle Tennessee has for some time 
 held an annual agricultural rally, that calls together 
 farmers and farmers' wives from a considerable section 
 of their country, and to these rallies they have brought 
 not only help from their own schools, but from the State 
 and national departments of agriculture. Deep ap- 
 preciation has been shown of this feature of the school 
 work by representatives of the government farm demon- 
 stration bureau, the boys' corn clubs, and the girls' 
 tomato clubs. 
 
 In hygiene especially the influence of these workers 
 receives appreciation from the guardians of health and 
 those who have lost their health. The health principles 
 of this people are more radical than the majority of men 
 wish to accept, but they are recognized by all as being 
 an advance in the direction of rational science; and many 
 who are brought through their schools or their sanita- 
 riums to an adoption of the curative regimen of a simple 
 dietary, healthful dress, water treatments, active labor, 
 cheerful religion, and prayer, testify to its blessing and 
 pleasure in their lives. In no more practical way is 
 shown the ability of the workers to cooperate with their 
 communities and with other workers for the world's good, 
 than in the matter of health and disease. The Rural 
 Sanitarium at Madison, as well as various humbler en- 
 terprises among the out-schools, has received the grate- 
 ful testimony of many prominent in professional and 
 government service, and their cooperation is assured 
 in the work which these interests are endeavoring to 
 forward. 
 
 In the library extension work of the state, several 
 of the schools have cooperated, helping their communi- 
 
284 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 ties in the selection and understanding of the best books, 
 adding hi most cases a number of then* own not inclu- 
 ded in the library's lists. 
 
 So also hi the efforts of the state to reduce the il- 
 literacy among the adult population, some of the schools 
 have added to the burdens of then- gratuitous work 
 of daily teaching, the additional work of night schools 
 and a campaign to include in these evening exercises 
 every one of the unlearned hi then* communities. 
 
 In all this cooperative service, it is the ambition of 
 these workers, emulating then* Master, to merit the 
 testimony given by one who, returning from a stay at 
 the Rural Sanitarium, was questioned as to how much 
 of religious indoctrination she had received, to which 
 she replied: "They do not need to talk then- religion; 
 they live it." 
 
XXV 
 
 THE TIMES OP CHEER 
 
 ONCE a year the self-supporting workers come up 
 to look one another in the face, to exchange ex- 
 periences, to encourage one another, and to lay plans 
 for more aggressive and extended work. That is, all 
 who can, come. It is a difficult thing for the most of 
 them to make the journey; for to solve the problem of 
 shelter, the gathering must be in a warm season sum- 
 jner or early fall and at that time the crops are 
 requiring attention, while few of the workers can easily 
 find expense money. Those who are near enough, drive 
 through in their wagons; and many a tale is told by the 
 more distant, of providential incomes to pay their way 
 to the meeting. 
 
 One brother and his wife, teaching in Alabama, 
 wished very much to attend a convention, but they were 
 practically without money, while they had two or three 
 small debts in the neighborhood, and no means appeared 
 to offer a way out. But they were in a peculiar situation 
 just then, which they felt required the council of their 
 brethren in order to decide their future, and whether 
 they should stay with the work at all, and they believed 
 It was God's will for them to go to the convention. 
 
 So they began to pray for the way to open, and pre- 
 pared their clothing and arranged their affairs for the 
 journey. In praying, they took their little daughter, 
 
 (285) 
 
286 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Dorothy, ten years old, into their confidence. She had 
 been trained to have perfect faith in whatever she asked 
 for and in what she did; and as soon as they had all prayed 
 for God to send money, she climbed up into her father's 
 lap and said, "Papa, how long will it take God to answer? 
 Will it be five minutes? Or will it be an hour?" Her 
 Father told her that God could answer in a minute, 
 but that he often tested our faith by having us wait 
 for a longer time, and he reminded her of the experience 
 of the prophet Daniel, who prayed for three weeks 
 before he had an answer to his prayer. 
 
 "Oh, but," she said, "it will not be three weeks 
 this time, because we have to go in two days. And I 
 believe we will get the money tomorrow." 
 
 Her father had a year-old colt which he decided to 
 try to sell to pay his debts and furnish money for the 
 trip, but he thought he could not expect a sale on the 
 mountain, as valuable horses were rare in that locality, 
 twenty- to thirty-dollar "jinnies" being much more com- 
 mon, and long time usually being given on the sale of a 
 horse. So he planned to take the colt down to Lock-and- 
 Dam, on the Tennessee River, a camp at the place where 
 the government was making improvements, and which 
 offered a better market than any other place near by. 
 
 He started out in the morning to walk the twenty- 
 four miles there and back, leading the colt. But he had 
 gone no more than three or four miles from home, and 
 was still on the mountain when a woman came out of 
 a house, calling, "Do you want to sell that colt?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "How much do you want for him?" 
 
 "Seventy-five dollars." 
 
 "Well, I'll take him," she said, and going into the 
 house produced the money. 
 
 It was a transaction unheard of for rapidity on the 
 mountain; and in two hours from the time of his leaving, 
 he had returned to his home, where Dorothy ran out to 
 meet him, crying, "I knew it would come today. I knew 
 
The Times of Cheer 287 
 
 it would when I prayed." . The next day they were en route 
 for the convention, where they received courage and in- 
 spiration to continue their work in the midst of unusual 
 difficulties. 
 
 The first of these annual gatherings was held in late 
 August, 1908, at the Madison School, where each suc- 
 ceeding convention has been held. The different meetings 
 have varied more or less in character of constituency 
 and program, but they have been alike in then: main 
 purpose of helping and cheering those already in the 
 field and in giving inspiration to others to enter it. The 
 schools nearest Madison have naturally been most 
 fully represented Oak Grove, Fountain Head, Chestnut 
 Hill, Spring Farm, Hawk Ridge though scarcely 
 more so than schools from fifty to one hundred miles 
 distant, like Bon Aqua to the west, Lawrenceburg to 
 the south, and Daylight and Sequatchie Valley to the 
 east. Alabama has seen members from its four schools 
 nearly always marked present. Farthest away within 
 the States, Georgia, Florida, and Virginia, and the Caro- 
 lina group of schools, have seldom failed to have repre- 
 sentatives present at the convention. Occasionally there 
 have come from the Cuban and Honduran schools teach- 
 ers who were in the States on business or furlough, and 
 also missionaries from South America, Central Africa, 
 China, India, and other foreign fields, some of whom have 
 had more or less experience in this kind of school work. 
 
 Six miles north of Nashville is the Hillcrest School, 
 which, though younger and as yet not so well developed, 
 aims at the same position in relation to the negro work 
 as the Madison School holds in relation to the white. 
 It was established in 1908, and has made good progress 
 in its mission of training negro workers as self-support- 
 ing teachers and farmers among their own people. So far, 
 however, being conveniently near to Madison, its white 
 teachers have joined the workers assembled there, and 
 their assistance has been of marked value in making the 
 convention successful. Their students also have the 
 
288 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 privileges of the convention for at least one day, the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 The students of the Madison School usually consti- 
 tute nearly half of the congregation at the convention, 
 and their presence is far from being a formal matter; 
 for they are almost without exception planning and study- 
 ing to do the same work, to meet the same problems, 
 which are discussed in the convention by those who are 
 now actually meeting them. The eager attention shown 
 by these students, the questions and the suggestions 
 that come from them, make no small part of the value 
 of the gathering. 
 
 We would invite you to attend with us a typical 
 convention. Let us arrive the night before its open- 
 ing, for promptness is a virtue highly prized, and there 
 are material reasons besides why it is better to be early 
 than late. If you go with us, you will walk the two 
 and a half miles from the station to the school, but 
 the road is macadam, and so, stowing our grips in the 
 vehicle where the most delicate ride, we cheerfully 
 follow this road through the garden spot of Tennessee 
 until, at the rise of the fourth or fifth long hill, we reach 
 the sign that says, " Rural Sanitarium/' and turn to the 
 left on the new stone road of the school. 
 
 Shortly, topping the crest of the ridge, which the 
 water tank marks as the highest point on the farm, 
 we pause to behold the panorama spread out before us. 
 Just beyond us, scarcely below, stretches the long 
 campus, from the old farm house up to the Rural Sani- 
 tarium, a road bordered on each side by cottages little 
 and big the little for homes, the big for public uses. 
 Cool and inviting it lies in the luxuriance of its blue- 
 grass sward, under the shade of the mighty old oaks 
 and the locusts. 
 
 Sleep is sweet in the dewy nights of blue-grass Ten- 
 nessee, and unless you are a light sleeper, it is not likely 
 that you hear, late at night or early in the morning, 
 the rumbling of the wagons that come in from Goodletts- 
 
The Times of Cheer 289 
 
 ville and Fountain Head and Portland, or even, perhaps, 
 from Bon Aqua and Lawrenceburg, bringing the teachers 
 and farmers who spent their last moments of light in 
 the corn field or in the canning factory or the mill, and 
 took the dark hours for their de luxe traveling to the 
 scene of the convention. 
 
 But in the morning we greet them. There is the 
 jovial Alden and the lean- jawed Irish Mulford, first of 
 the out-school pioneers; there is Martin from Bon Aqua 
 and Johnston from Eufola, who help us to remember, 
 come Sabbath, what old-time preaching is like; there 
 is little Leitzman from Alabama, and the bluff, hearty 
 Artress from west Tennessee, to talk to us about build- 
 ing and blessing. And Clifford Howell from the Cum- 
 berlands and Marshall Johnston from the foothills of 
 the Blue Ridge, are among those who represent a work 
 antedating Madison, yet welcoming its magnificent aid. 
 Tolman and his family and the Scotts from Sand Moun- 
 tain, and Groesbeck from Sequatchie Valley to the 
 north of them, Waller and Steinman and Graves from 
 the French Broad plateau, and Watson from his celery 
 lands and orange groves by Tampa, and Pflugradt 
 from the Tidewater of Virginia, Diehl and Jacobs from 
 Kentucky, and Kendall and Rudisaile from Arkansas 
 all these bring news from near and far of the progress 
 of the self-supporting school work. 
 
 And not alone from the school work are we to hear. 
 DOWIN from Chicago comes the virile, rapid-fire Dr. 
 Paulson, with the gospel on his tongue and the Life 
 Boat in his hand, fresh from experiences in prison minis- 
 tering and platform lecturing, from rescue work in the 
 slums and the care of his great sanitarium comes to 
 offer a union of city work with the work of the wilderness. 
 And with him is Dr. Kress, world-wide medical evan- 
 gelist, a leader alike in temperance crusades and per- 
 sonal evangelism. Dr. Hayward, veteran among the 
 medical missionary forces in the South, comes up from 
 Georgia, with his wife, a sharer in his work of 
 19 
 
290 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 ministry to the mountaineers. And closer by, in Nash- 
 ville, so that he can alternate attendance with prac- 
 tise, is Dr. Harris, earnest advocate and practitioner 
 of medical philanthropy. Then there are nurses like 
 Clatter of Alabama, Kate Macey and her corps in 
 North Carolina, and Elma Jeffries in the Palmetto 
 State, and last of all, Oswald, with his report of needs 
 and service and miracles. By all of these the note of 
 medical evangelism is sounded, and emphasis given to 
 the place the healing art is to occupy in the work of the 
 gospel. It is a note fitly sounded at Madison; for a third 
 of its students are nurses, its president and its dean as 
 well as other teachers are physicians in charge of the 
 sanitarium, and ministry to the bodily ills of men is in- 
 terwoven with all the work and the teaching of the school. 
 
 The convention opens with a praise and experience 
 service. Dr. Sutherland, who is invariably elected chair- 
 man year by year, strikes, as is his habit, the note 
 of cheer and courage, and the testimonies that roll in 
 in response are no ordinary recitals of hopes and fears 
 and desires, but rather live, specific reports of deeds ac- 
 complished, needs inspiring to service, difficulties finan- 
 cial and spiritual overcome, and joy in the realization 
 of fellowship with other laborers and of oneness with 
 Christ. Sometimes a minor note is sounded by some 
 struggling soul new to the work and almost overwhelmed 
 with the obstacles in the way, but invariably the chord of 
 triumph is also struck, feebly perhaps at first, but full 
 and strong before the close of the convention. 
 
 On Sabbath, the time of the Sabbath school is occu- 
 pied by a general study of the day's lesson, and then 
 by a discussion of Sabbath school and Sunday school 
 work. Experiences from many quarters in methods 
 and results are ready for relation by practically every 
 one, but the Sabbath school superintendent (a student) 
 keeps the discussion brisk, short, crisp, and to the point. 
 
 Listen, thereafter, to a sermon that is neither the an- 
 cient exposition of a text nor the modern vogue of a 
 
The Times of Cheer 291 
 
 harangue upon some sensational theme, but rather a 
 sermon based upon the model of the Sermon on the Mount. 
 Says the speaker: "The words of Christ hi reference to 
 the Good Samaritan are addressed to the church for all 
 time : ' Go thou and do likewise ' not merely to preach 
 the gospel, but to minister to men. To our sick people 
 in our sanitariums we do not give all the same treat- 
 ment a cold plunge. We study the needs of each in- 
 dividual, and treat each one accordingly. Just so it 
 must be in the science of salvation. The manifestation 
 of the love of Christ is the last message to the world. 
 As we go out as workers, we are not only to study Christ's 
 methods of work, but we are to carry with us Christ's 
 spirit of work." 
 
 Saturday night begins the discussion of the subject 
 of agriculture, so important to the rural worker, a sub- 
 ject which is continued on Monday, a special agriculture 
 day, on which many speakers from the State and national 
 departments of agriculture and education are present. 
 The presiding officer of the day is the county superin- 
 tendent of schools, and an enthusiastic audience re- 
 sponds to the speakers 7 instruction, their appeals, and 
 their words of appreciation for service being rendered 
 by the teachers and workers before them. 
 
 Sunday has been a red letter day, when large numbers 
 from the Nashville publishing, educational, and medical 
 interests were present, and often from greater distances. 
 The discussion of experiences in the hill and mountain 
 schools begins on this day, and principles and plans are 
 thoroughly studied and illustrated by the varied ex- 
 periences of those who present and discuss the topics 
 under consideration. On this day, too, first appear on 
 exhibition the displays of the workmanship of the schools. 
 It must be said, however, that though these exhibits 
 bear fair comparison with similar exhibits in sloyd of 
 paper and woodwork and weaving and drawing and 
 sewing to be seen elsewhere, the real exhibits, which best 
 tell what these schools are doing, are to be seen only by 
 
292 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 visits to their various neighborhoods, where the more 
 permanent and valuable evidences of then- energy, 
 care, and patience are shown in the homes and farms 
 of the communities. 
 
 The teachers enter heartily into a discussion of one 
 another's circumstances and peculiar needs. Oftentimes 
 these can be and are discussed in public meeting with 
 the greatest profit; at other times private conferences 
 are arranged between those in peculiar circumstances 
 and those who have experience and wisdom to help them. 
 The assembly room of Gotzian Hall, where the sessions 
 are usually held, is a forum of world-wide subjects. 
 Now it is the struggling farmer, but lately detached from 
 the accountant's desk, who is anxiously inquiring about 
 the use of fertilizers, and the answers come from the 
 radical's utter condemnation to the expert's succinct 
 advice and recommendation of bulletins for study. 
 Again, it is a request for information as to the best text 
 and auxiliary books, and a physician responds with the 
 recommendation of the newest physiology, or a littera- 
 teur (rare bird in this practical, next-the-ground col- 
 lection) tells of a list of helpful juvenile books which 
 appeals for book donations may possibly bring in. Again, 
 there are tangles of government and cooperation whose 
 general principles may be dwelt upon in public, but 
 which for specific discussion require private conferences. 
 And yet again, a brother brings a report of threatened 
 opposition and obstruction of his medical evangelistic 
 work, a thoughtful discussion of which results in the 
 division of the convention into groups for prayer and 
 study, that there may be unanimity in the final course 
 adopted. 
 
 And all this while the two or three committees 
 which the simple organization requires, are busily at 
 work collating and condensing and relating the ideas 
 and suggestions of the body for a report at the last 
 meeting. It is a notable thing with what speed and 
 unanimity these final recommendations are put through, 
 
The Times of Cheer 293 
 
 because the discussions consist almost wholly of commen- 
 dation and exhortation, and are brief at that. The 
 members of the convention are for the most part better 
 accustomed to deeds than to debates. 
 
 Five days is the utmost tune that such a meeting 
 can be held. With difficulty have the workers left their 
 farms and shops and homes to be present on these days 
 of cheer. Always in the midst of the joy of this asso- 
 ciation the call of the needs at home is sounding in 
 their ears; and they are at once loath to leave and im- 
 patient to be back at work. But of their faith and joy 
 there is no better testimony than that of a young teacher 
 in the last morning meeting. One cannot give the con- 
 viction that lies in his tones, in his eyes suffused with 
 tears, as speaking of a worker, he says, "If I had no other 
 result for all my struggles there, single-handed, over- 
 whelmed with tasks, perplexed about money matters, 
 knowing myself inadequate to the needs if I had no 
 other result than the salvation of this young man, I 
 should thank God eternally that he has permitted me 
 to undertake this work." 
 
 The evening sees some of the wagons depart; the 
 morning says farewell to the scores who go by rail. They 
 bid one another good-by with affection, with clasped 
 hands and embraces, with smiling lips but oftentimes 
 tearful eyes. Their words and their looks declare that 
 the brotherhood of these times of cheer shall be main- 
 tained out on the frontier, as, few or single-handed, they 
 continue the work they have so bravely begun. It is 
 a little band, this, training in the wilderness for great 
 things; and many there must be to join them, like 
 Zebulun of old, "such as went forth to battle, expert 
 in war, . . . fifty thousand, which could keep rank " 
 and "were not of double heart," 
 
ttefy xrf the Hitts 
 
is our Jerusalem, the children of the hills; 
 our neighbors; our kith and kin. Begin with them 
 and save them and let them help us save the 
 world." EDWARD 0. GUERRANT. 
 
XXVI 
 
 THE TORCH-BEARER 
 
 THE limestone bed of the Cumberlands is honeycombed 
 with caves. Memory runs back to a day when a 
 school outing promised the unexampled joy of explor- 
 ing one of these caves. A lazy, hazy Indian summer 
 day, bronze-leafed and stubble-paved, opened its right 
 of way to the dark mysteries it might never look upon. 
 At the hole in the mountain's face, the varied crowd 
 of youth and children,with one or two elders, stopped 
 to get ready their lights, for which perhaps half the 
 company had provision. The great majority bore 
 " lighter wood" torches fat pine knots, with adher- 
 ing splinters for handles. There were two or three 
 lanterns, one of them a huge, old-fashioned black ja- 
 panned affair carried by a little girl named Emmy. 
 But the chief interest centered in the newfangled light 
 of the teacher, who, deploring the ravages of the smoky 
 pine knots upon the alabaster treasures of the cave, 
 had brought with him a powerful electric torch, the 
 object now of envious and half -scornful raillery from the 
 dozen youngsters who bore the time-honored " lighter." 
 Within the cave the pungent censers of the pine 
 knots threw their gleams on the walls, or darted glints 
 of smoky fire upon the path as we stumbled along. But 
 so dim was their light, and so erratic then: restless car- 
 riers, that only fleeting glimpses were to be caught of 
 
 (297) 
 
298 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 the great high domes with their clusters of glittering 
 stalactites. Or, when they were held near to the crys- 
 tal-tipped daggers lower down, their oily smoke so 
 quickly killed the beauty that we thrust them away. 
 
 Then little Emmy, lifting her lantern, sent its shaft of 
 light along the rows of "The Dragon's Teeth 77 or round 
 the circle of "The Queen's Necklace," and made all then- 
 jeweled points glow with passion or with pride. 
 
 But it was to the teacher's torch that we owed our 
 vision of the grandeur and glory of this hidden world. 
 Down the winding, rough-floored corridors we passed 
 from chamber to chamber, piloted through the dark- 
 ness by that clear, streaming light, ever steady, ever 
 playing just right to show the pitfalls or to reveal 
 the beauties of the way. Here we lay flat to 
 gaze over a precipice into a Stygian gulf that 
 even the flashing eye of the electric torch could 
 but vaguely explore; there we saw, rough-cast by na- 
 ture and shaped by imagination, a trio of squat stone 
 gods that might claim rule of those realms. On the shore 
 of the dusky Whippoorwill Pool; in the great Throne 
 Room with its canopied chair of state and its graded 
 seats for nobles and for thralls; or, yon side of Fat Man's 
 Misery, in the low-roofed Room of the Fountains, with 
 its cold, crystal streams flowing over the fluted lips of 
 the terraced basins through all these, the torch- 
 bearer was our seer, our interpreter, making the near 
 mysteries revelations and the distant secrets lures. 
 
 Once, twice, we tarried behind, and were left in pitch 
 blackness, scarcely daring to move foot for fear of dis- 
 aster. All about us, doubtless, were wonders: columns 
 and arches, moldings and frescoes of brown and gray 
 and white, marvels of nature's art; but they were all 
 hidden to our eyes. To us they did not exist until the 
 torch again flooded the recesses of our station, and 
 brought them to life. 
 
 The pine-knot boys were racing and leaping and 
 halloing from rock to rock and room to room, crying 
 
The Torch-Bearer 299 
 
 out splendid discoveries, breaking off trophies of crys- 
 tal-studded treasures of the cave, and with their torches 
 making great strips of blackboard whereon to write their 
 names. But to us they were only will-o'-the-wisps, and 
 their unrestrained vandalism but the regrettable excesses 
 of an alien enterprise. 
 
 Once they came in touch with our torch-bearer. At 
 one end of "the Cathedral," where the high roof stooped 
 toward the floor, rose the great pipe-organ, its columns 
 of stalactites reaching down their slender arms to touch 
 the sturdier forms of the stalagmites below. The white 
 light of the electric torch streamed upon the snowy 
 surface, from spreading base to arching top, and made 
 it indeed all that fancy called it. The hush of sacred 
 thought and feeling came upon us, and hi some hearts 
 there rose the strains that echo what the angels sing. 
 
 Then through the stillness rang the shout of a pine- 
 knot boy, as he clambered behind the organ. Through 
 the holes and the screen of the thin stone connecting 
 the pipes his torch shone out redly; and suddenly all 
 the mystic beauty of the structure vanished, and we 
 stood gazing upon the fiery mouths and the glowing 
 eyes of a monster, one of those metal-eating monsters 
 that devour the mountains, the heat of its inward fires 
 glaring through its belly and the smoke pouring forth 
 from its nostrils. And then all the air was filled with 
 the clamor of the multitude, shouting. But the clear 
 white light in the hands of our torch-bearer led us away 
 and on. 
 
 For hours we wandered through the mazes of the 
 cavern, till it seemed we must be miles away from our 
 starting point. Then at last we climbed into the dry 
 atmosphere of the " Saltpetre Room," whose crumbly 
 dusty floor was ridged and furrowed by trenches and 
 excavations. Our leader paused, while the company, 
 weary for the most part, and anxious for the end, gath- 
 ered around him. The pine-knot torches had burned 
 to the last of then* lives, and now but two or three piece* 
 
300 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 remained to be thrown, spluttering and fuming, upon 
 the floor. Of the oil lamps, all had burned out ex- 
 cept little Emmy's faithful big black lantern. She lifted 
 it now to look at its yellow flame, and her little fingers 
 carefully, anxiously turned the wick a trifle higher. 
 
 "Teacher/' she said, "when will we get to the end?" 
 
 "Do you know where we are?" he asked. Some of 
 the older boys knew; but a depression, mystically born, 
 perhaps, with the dying, of their torches, sat upon them, 
 and then* grimy faces remained stolid as they fixed their 
 eyes on the teacher. 
 
 "Do you know where we are?" he said. 
 
 "I should say," replied one whose lantern light 
 had lasted till a few moments before, "I should say 
 we are about ten miles from daylight." 
 
 "We have traveled a long way," said the teacher, 
 "and our lights have shown us many things, the things, 
 I suppose, that we each were most interested in. And 
 now we have no light but this one and Emmy's. But 
 we shall not need them long. We are in the "Saltpetre 
 Room," where long ago that substance was mined to 
 make gunpowder for the war. And this room itself 
 has seen more than one fight; for this ground was sought 
 by all the warring factions. It is very close to the sur- 
 face; and we are very near daylight now." 
 
 So, turning to the right, he led us down a little bank 
 and forward. And then, at another quick turn, we saw, 
 just a little ahead, the white patch that meant the day. 
 
 There are torch-bearers in the darkness today, 
 leading the leaderless, lighting the benighted, reveal- 
 ing the treasures that may be monuments or that may 
 be plunder. Some of them are pine-knot boys, bearing 
 the cloudy light of material science, careless of foot and 
 hand and eye, prodigal of beauty, who rush among the 
 treasures revealed by their torches, showering their 
 smoke and sparks, shouting their gainful discoveries, 
 and leaving behind in then- vandal track a ruined realm. 
 
 Others there are, like gentle Emmy, whose quiet 
 
The Torch-Bearer 301 
 
 little amber flame throws no great splashes of light upon 
 a wide or distant field, but with quiet illumination brings 
 out in pleasing distinction the features of a life close at 
 hand. They are safe guides, and they live long. 
 
 And to others is given the greater duty and the greater 
 joy to throw that pure and strong and steady light 
 that reveals the beauty and the grandeur and the glory 
 of a world in which these things are greatest, but where 
 they yet lie hidden in the darkness. He who carries 
 the undying torch of truth has need not to think of him- 
 self, his own aggrandizement, his repute, his pleasure. 
 He is made an interpreter to those who follow him or 
 who may find him. He may not boast to others or to 
 his secret self of his superior light or of the favor its 
 possession accords him. He may not use it for his pleas- 
 ure alone, forgetting the slow or the weak or even the 
 careless. He is a guardian against dangers, a portrayer 
 of wonders, a revealer of secrets. He may not clamor 
 against vulgarity, lest he be vulgar; nor fret at way- 
 wardness, lest he estrange the wayward; nor be impa- 
 tient at sluggishness, lest he lose his following. And if, 
 in patience and in peace, he lead his people through the 
 mazes of the dark land he lightens, teach them the 
 wonders and the joys of the way they tread until they 
 forget their weariness, and bring them at last about him 
 yes, even, perhaps, the smutty stragglers that have 
 lost then: torches in the battle-scarred vestibule to 
 the great new earth, he may happily be able to say to 
 them, "We are very near the daylight now." 
 
 The mountains of the South will not much longer 
 be in any great degree an unknown land. Their great 
 valleys, always the center of a broad life, have become 
 the bases of assault from all the forces of the age upon the 
 mountain world. Capitalism has seized it in its grasp; 
 philanthropy is casting its mantle over it. To the west 
 of the Appalachian Valley, the capitalist at work is ex- 
 ploiting its great oil and coal and iron and timber treas- 
 ures; to the east, the capitalist at play is raiding its 
 
3O2 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 "Land of the Sky." The state is pushing its program 
 of education farther and higher in the mountain land, 
 and the forces of religion and religious education are 
 making an earnest effort to keep pace. 
 
 Today the mountaineer of the accessible regions is 
 being lock-stepped with the rest of the country in its 
 march of civilization comrade not merely in know- 
 ledge and power, but in recession of virtue as well. To- 
 morrow the remote hills will echo to the tread of this 
 same civilization; and it may not be long till we shall 
 have only the nooks and crannies of the mountain land 
 to match, in some sort of kinship, with the shanty towns 
 of the North, the hardscrabble farms of the East, and 
 the slums of the great cities. In what ranks the moun- 
 taineer will then march depends upon the course made 
 clearest for him today. 
 
 And so far the broadest open road is the road to the new 
 Americanism, paved with dollars, decorated with dis- 
 play, and ending in dissipation. The mountaineer of 
 old was dependent on his own efforts. If he was "fore- 
 thoughted and fore-handed/* he lived well if plainly by 
 his industry and his providence. He knew he must 
 make his own crop and fat /iis own meat before the 
 winter, or he should go hungry,. His wife knew she must 
 spin and weave and fit, or tier family would shiver. 
 There was little exchange of labor for cash, little cash 
 to be expended, and in consequence there was self- 
 dependence rather than a trust in easy money to be made 
 somehow when the need came, 
 
 But today, cheap though mountain labor may be, 
 it has a market; and, deceived by the sight of a silver 
 dollar every new day, the dollar that once went so far 
 around the circle of the year, the mountaineer is apt 
 to forget his fields and let other people grow his stock, 
 while he speeds his strength for other men's dollars 
 and his dollars for ether men's cunning. And the ex- 
 change is not equal, &? he soon discovers, both because 
 his common needs require more money than he thought, 
 
The Torch-Bearer 303 
 
 and because uncommon needs and luxuries have been 
 born with the advent of the new life. Fashions of diet 
 and dress and adornment must be copied from the world. 
 The sunbonnet gives way to the flower-decked hat, that 
 lasts half as long and costs ten times as much. Home- 
 spun that knew no age is discarded for bright calicoes 
 that live but a year. Rent eats big holes in the weekly 
 pay-roll; and food, even if stinted in desperation, takes 
 more than the laborer ever dreamed food could cost. 
 The vices get a new foothold in the camps and the 
 towns, or under the fostering indulgence of millionaires 
 at play. 
 
 If it is to the cotton factory the mountaineer has 
 been lured, he finds, with his large family of children, 
 a rare chance for evil development of his cupidity. Child 
 labor is popular at the looms, and the father can put 
 his children and his wife to work at a combined wage 
 sufficient to support him in leisure, and this he very fre- 
 quently does, sometimes conniving with conscienceless 
 mill-owners at the admittance of children below the le- 
 gal age. 
 
 If it is to the mines he goes, he takes his oldest boy 
 and works tremendously at first, perhaps, until he is 
 able to earn five dollars a day underground and not 
 a cent out under the sun. Then, perhaps, he discovers 
 that it is not necessary to work every day or all day, 
 and his leisure time is spent at the grog shop or 
 the "blind tiger," while his easy money goes for what- 
 ever he may cast his eyes upon, until the pinch of ne- 
 cessity drives him underground again. 
 
 But if he has the somewhat more fortunate lot of 
 living hi the play-ground land of the tourist and pleas- 
 ure-seeker, he may not be torn from his farm, but he 
 nevertheless neglects it to minister to the pleasures of 
 the wealthy. He and his sons discover that the pos- 
 session of a span of horses and a smart rig, or perhaps 
 a second-hand automobile bought on time, is the open 
 sesame to a life of rolling leisure, with easy money, 
 
304 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 driving from mountain top to laurel-lined glen with 
 parties whose fashions of dress he copies, and whose 
 fashions of morals he as yet may only wonder at. His 
 wife more strenuously, but with the same thought of 
 easy money, keeps boarders, finding at the close of the 
 season big receipts and some small gain. And then 
 every thing dies till the opening of the next season. 
 
 Through all this life of change and excitement and 
 flowing money, there runs little thought of betterment 
 of mind and soul. The children are likely to be kept 
 from school for any slight advantage of money earning. 
 Religion, under the blighting influence of outsiders' 
 neglect and light scorn, is shamefacedly abandoned, 
 and the easy tolerance and thoughtless skepticism of 
 America's great godless majority takes its place. The 
 mill-hands and the miners become a migrant class, 
 wandering from place to place in ostensible search of 
 better wage or living conditions, but in reality for sheer 
 weariness of life's monotony and a craving for change 
 and excitement. Their lands have been sold, perhaps, 
 to the great corporation seeking mineral rights, or to 
 the agent of the wealthy pleasure-seeker who wants a 
 summer residence; and the stability, the solid force, of 
 the free land-holder have gone with their sale. 
 
 Their neighbors who remain, refusing to be parted 
 from then 1 homes, are perhaps the select remnant, and 
 to them must we look for a maintenance of the worth 
 of the mountaineer. And yet they do not wholly escape 
 the influence of new standards and opportunities. The 
 mountaineer is inevitably changing. His resources are 
 being taken by the exploiter, for the benefit of the na- 
 tion, perhaps, as well as the capitalist, but not to the net 
 profit of the mountaineer. For these new forces, so far, 
 are against his development. His ancient arts, suited 
 only to the needs of a primitive, isolated society, are 
 useless in the new era of divided labor and mechanical 
 substitutes, and he forgets them. His religion is too 
 old-fashioned for a formal Christianity and a material- 
 
The Torch-Bearer 305 
 
 istic philosophy, while his culture is laughed out of 
 existence by a society that runs from board-walk loung- 
 ings to Argentine tangoes. In this sudden awakening 
 from the sedate life of our great-great-grandfathers, to 
 the feverish, ceaseless movement of this crazed age, 
 the shock to the mountaineer unanchored by a prime 
 hope in God and unhelped by a training for a broader life, 
 is likely to prove fatal. Wrenched from his moorings as 
 an independent, self-reliant, God-fearing American free- 
 holder, he drifts to swell the restless, discontented, 
 terrible array of America's employed and unemployed. 
 Whether he shall be saved from this is a question that 
 waits on the action of America's forces of conservation. 
 
 Over against this trend is set the influence of the 
 school and the true church of Christ. The defect in 
 their program is that they have chiefly followed rather 
 than preceded the economic invasion. But where they 
 are, they are more than gathering salvage; they are sav- 
 ing crews that may bring the fleet into harbor. 
 
 The state (which means the community under the 
 guidance of some great-souled leaders) is pushing hard 
 to extend the term and improve the efficiency of the 
 public school. It is beginning to introduce the study 
 and practise of hygiene and to create a love for country 
 life and agricultural science. The more colorful life 
 typified by the boys' corn clubs and the girls' tomato 
 clubs is becoming known in the mountains, though as 
 yet only on their outer edges. And a community spirit 
 is being fostered, more, perhaps, by the school than 
 by any other agency. 
 
 The handicap of the school is the scarcity of well 
 trained and devoted teachers. And, beyond all local 
 problems, comes the query whether that which the public 
 school has failed to accomplish in the great world out- 
 side, where it has not succeeded in stemming the tide 
 of materialism, it can accomplish here. It can train 
 the intellect, it can sharpen the wits for the fight over 
 material things, but it cannot shape the soul. 
 
 20 
 
306 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 To the church, that true church of God which stands by 
 the Bible, resists the aggressions of clerical and scholarly 
 agnosticism, believes in the law, trusts hi the gospel, 
 preaches salvation through Christ alone, and holds up 
 the hope of a returning Saviour who shall restore all 
 things, to that church belongs the greatest responsi- 
 bility and the greatest opportunity of the age in the sav- 
 ing of the mountaineer. This is the religion yet popular 
 in the mountains; unknown in its fulness, perhaps, not 
 all its bearings recognized, not all its obligations ob- 
 served, but yet in substance treasured in the hearts of 
 the mountain people. 
 
 To them let men and women come as unassuming 
 Christian friends, settling among them as farmers, or 
 mechanics, or nurses, or housewives, holding up the 
 steady light that illumines and wins. To them also is 
 due to come the torch-bearers who can throw the broad, 
 clear light of flaming truth upon the uneven path, the 
 dark abysses, and the splendid walls and domes. 
 
 Who has more light has more responsibility. He to 
 whom has been entrusted so great a power must seek 
 for wisdom to use it righteously and well. Not hi boast- 
 ing, not hi self-gratulation, not in stupid arrogance, 
 but with earnest thought for the slightest and the great- 
 est good he may do others in this spirit must the 
 light-bearer come. And for him the mountains hold a re- 
 ward that he may not fully realize until he is about to 
 lead his people into the great day of a new heavens and 
 a new earth. 
 
XXVII 
 
 A CHOSEN PEOPLE 
 
 THERE have been many peoples chosen of God 
 through time's history, and never once from among 
 the mighty of earth. They have done great deeds, they 
 have preached great messages, they have endured great 
 trials, they have won great victories. They have seen a 
 world drowned in overwhelming flood, they have turned 
 their backs upon a crumbling Babel to found an empire 
 of souls, they have trod through deserts and camped 
 beneath mountains where wonders of earth matched 
 wonders of the heavens, they have turned from the 
 shadow of a Cross to become the ambassadors of a King- 
 dom. In the dungeon and at the stake they have tri- 
 umphantly assaulted the gates of hell; through jungles 
 and deserts, through witchcrafts and tyrannies, through 
 stripes and imprisonments, through perils of land and 
 sea and wrestlings with the princes of the powers of 
 darkness they have carried the banner of their King 
 a chosen people, but not from the great of earth. 
 
 They have heard the great apostle say: "God hath 
 chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the 
 wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world 
 to confound the things which are mighty; and base 
 things of the world, and things which are despised, hath 
 God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to 
 nought things that are." They have heard the great 
 
 (307) 
 
308 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 prophet say: "The Lord did not set his love upon you, 
 nor choose you, because ye were more in number than 
 any people; for ye were the fewest of all people." And 
 they have learned to repeat the humble avowal put into 
 Israel's mouth: "A Syrian ready to perish was my father, 
 and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there 
 with a few . . . and the Egyptians evil entreated 
 us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage 
 . . . And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt 
 with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, 
 and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with 
 wonders." And thus they hear his purpose: " Ye are a 
 chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, 
 a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises 
 of him who hath called you out of darkness into his 
 marvelous light." "I the Lord have called thee in right- 
 eousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, 
 and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of 
 the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the 
 prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness 
 out of the prison house." 
 
 For this purpose God has called, not men from 
 king's houses, not men clothed in soft raiment, not men 
 shaken like reeds in the wind. He has called men who 
 worked with their hands, like Noah; men who turned 
 their faces away from the city, like Abraham; men whom 
 he snatched from prospective thrones, like Moses, to 
 learn patience in the wilderness; men who learned pa- 
 tience and trust and joy in the fields, like David; men who 
 despised effeminacy, like Elijah; abstemious men, like 
 Daniel; and single-minded men, like John the Baptist. 
 The life of plain living and single aim that made these 
 men the chosen of God, is bounded by laws far too 
 strict to invite the majority of men. When God would 
 try the experiment of embracing within the ranks of his 
 chosen people a whole nation, heirs of the promise made 
 their fathers, he gave them in great detail the laws whose 
 essence then 1 fathers had known and kept. They were 
 
A Chosen People 309 
 
 laws that would distinguish them for temperance, pa- 
 tience, justice, loyalty, and devotion. If they could 
 keep that code, it should be their wisdom and under- 
 standing "in the sight of the nations, which shall hear 
 all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is 
 a wise and understanding people. " 
 
 Seldom, however, were ail this chosen people true to 
 their God; and from among them he must again and 
 again take, to do his work, his true chosen ones, like 
 Gideon's band in the valley of Jezreel and Jonathan at 
 Michmash, like Elijah's scattered seven thousand and 
 the three worthies on the plain of Dura. But in every 
 case the chosen ones were noble souls who had had train- 
 ing, by fate or will, in hard and simple living. And thus 
 has it been in all succeeding ages. 
 
 Moreover, this distinction has not been a legacy, 
 kept by one people from age to age. It is a spiritual, 
 not a natural, birthright. The fathers that should rightly 
 train their sons did indeed pass on to them in some 
 measure the precious heritage; but few were the sons 
 who could be soul-proof against worldly prosperity. So, 
 then, the honor has passed from people to people, each 
 one of which came forth from a life of simplicity and in- 
 dustry to meet the tests. 
 
 Who were the fathers of those vine-dressers and 
 herdsmen of Italy's Alps that through the midnight of 
 Europe defied and defeated the armies of Rome? Who 
 were the followers of Ziska and Procopius but breakers 
 of clods and threshers of grain, when they were called to 
 swing their iron flails against Austria's priest-ridden 
 power? Who had heard of the prowess of the Low- 
 landers, except as builders of dikes and makers of 
 meadows, when they rose against the barbarism of Catholic 
 Spain, and established a home for freedom? Who prophe- 
 sied, when a little band of persecuted men found refuge 
 on the estates of a German count, that from feeble 
 Hernhutt was to go forth the greatest missionary cru- 
 sade since the days of the apostles, that from that 
 
3io The Men of the Mountains 
 
 flickering light should flame forth a glory through the 
 frozen North and the wild wilderness of the West, 
 through the dank jungles of the tropics, through deserts, 
 and to the isles of the sea? 
 
 God is no respecter of persons, and in every land he 
 has those that serve him. Whosoever will may make 
 one of the chosen. Philistine and Canaanite, Ethio- 
 pian and Gaul, Chinese and Kanaka, have furnished 
 recruits for the army of the Lord rare souls who re- 
 volted from then 1 surroundings and their training, and 
 by overcoming gained power as warriors of God. Yet 
 their lives are also proof of the fact that privation, 
 whether chosen or forced, is the armorer of heroes. And 
 it is from among those who as a people are accustomed 
 to this privation that the most recruits are gained. 
 
 It has come now to the time when God is enlisting 
 his last legion. The long war against sin and Satan is 
 drawing to a close. The last defense of God's positions 
 must be the most courageous, and the last assaults 
 upon the deviPs trenches must be the most determined 
 and heroic. Is it too much to expect of our King that, 
 while receiving volunteers from every land, he has also 
 been training in his mountain strongholds a picked guard 
 for a special service, the spiritual sons and successors 
 of Gideon and Elijah, of Maccabeus and Gianavello, of 
 Zwingle and Knox? For this position and this service 
 are the mountaineers of Appalachia fit. Do any question 
 then 1 fitness? Listen to the testimony of those who 
 know them best. 
 
 In their souls lives the mystic beauty of the hills 
 that inspired God's prophets of old: "Only a super- 
 ficial observer could fail to understand that the moun- 
 tain people really love their wilderness love it 
 for its beauty, for its freedom. Their intimacy with it 
 dates from a babyhood when the thrill of clean wet 
 sand was good to little feet; when 'frog houses' were 
 built and little tracks were printed in rows all over the 
 shore of the creek; when the beginning of esthetic feel- 
 
A Chosen People 311 
 
 ing found expression in necklaces of scarlet haws and 
 headdresses pinned and braided together of oak leaves, 
 cardinal flowers, and fern; when bear-grass in spring, 
 'sarvices' and berries in summer, and muscadines in 
 autumn were first sought after and prized most for the 
 'wild flavor/ the peculiar tang of the woods which they 
 contain. 
 
 "I once rode up the Side with a grandmother from 
 Sawyer's Springs, who cried out as the overhanging 
 curve of the bluff, crowned with pines, came into view: 
 'Now ain't that finer than any picter you ever seed 
 in your life? and they call us pore mountaineers! 
 We git more out o' life than anybody. 7 
 
 "The charm and mystery of by-gone days broods 
 over the mountain country the charm of pioneer 
 hardihood, of primitive peace, of the fatalism of ancient 
 peoples, of the rites and legends of the aborigines. To 
 one who understands these high solitudes it is no marvel 
 that the inhabitants should be mystics, dreamers given 
 to fancies often absurd but often wildly sweet. 
 
 "Nothing less than the charm of their stern mother- 
 land could hold them here. They know well enough 
 that elsewhere they might sit by the flesh-pots. Oc- 
 casionally a whole starved-out family will emigrate 
 westward, and, having settled, will spend years in simply 
 waiting for a chance to sell out and move back again. 
 All alike cling to the ungracious acres they have so pa- 
 tiently and hardly won, because of the wide world that 
 lies outside their puny fences, because of the dream vistas, 
 blue and violet, that lead their eyes afar among the 
 hills." 1 
 
 They have the poverty, the bare living, that has 
 made the more than Spartan heroes of the church: 
 "This poverty of natural resources makes the mountain- 
 eer's fight for life a hard one. At the same time, it gives 
 him vigor, hardihood, and endurance of body; it saves 
 him from the comforts and dainties that weaken; and 
 
 'Emma B. Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, pp. 17-19. 
 
312 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 it makes him a formidable competitor when it forces 
 him to come down into the plains, as it often does." 1 
 
 Will there be need today, in foreign lands or in the 
 hard places of the home field, for such endurance as was 
 shown by the circuit-riders of 1800? Behold it still 
 living in the mountaineer heirs of those fathers: "As a 
 class, they have great and restless physical energy. 
 Considering the quantity and quality of what they eat, 
 there is no people who can beat them in endurance of 
 strain and privation. They are great walkers and car- 
 riers of burdens. . . . One of our women, known 
 as 'Long Goody ' (I measured her; six feet three inches 
 she stood) walked eighteen miles across the Smokies 
 into Tennessee, crossing at an elevation of five thousand 
 feet, merely to shop more advantageously than she 
 could at home. The next day she shouldered fifty pounds 
 of flour and some other groceries and bore them home 
 before nightfall. Uncle Jimmy Crawford, in his seventy- 
 second year, came to join a party of us on a bear-hunt. 
 He walked twelve miles across the mountain, carrying 
 his equipment and four days 7 rations for himself and 
 dogs. Finding that we had gone on ahead of him, he 
 followed to our camp on Siler's Bald, twelve more miles, 
 climbing another three thousand feet, much of it by bad 
 trail, finishing the twenty-four-mile trip in seven hours 
 and then wanted to turn in and help cut the night 
 wood. Young mountaineers afoot easily outstrip a 
 horse on a day's journey by road and trail. 
 
 "In a climate where it showers about two days out 
 of three, through spring and summer, the women go 
 about, like the men, unshielded from the wet. If you 
 expostulate, one will laugh and reply: 'I ain't sugar, 
 nor salt, nor nobody's honey.' Slickers are worn only 
 on horseback and two-thirds of our people had no 
 horses." 
 
 "In bear-hunting, our parties usually camped at 
 about five thousand feet above sea level. At this ele- 
 
 Fox, Jr., Blue-grass and Rhododendron, p. 17. 
 
A Chosen People 313 
 
 vation, in the long nights before Christmas the cold 
 often was bitter, and the wind might blow a gale. Some- 
 times the native hunters would lie out in the open all night 
 without a sign of a blanket or an ax. They would say: 
 'La! Many's the night I've been out when the frost 
 was spewed up so high (measuring three or four inches 
 with the hand), and that right around the fire, too.' 
 Cattle hunters in the mountains never carry a blanket 
 or a shelter-cloth, and they sleep out wherever night 
 finds them, often in pouring rain or flying snow. . . . 
 Such nurture from childhood makes white men as in- 
 different to the elements as Fuegians." 1 
 
 Some even of the mountaineer's faults are born of 
 his virtues. Is he quick to resent injury and apt to 
 strike hard in revenge? it is a trait derived from his 
 regard for justice and schooled by his sense of personal 
 responsibility and clan loyalty: " Consider for a moment 
 the mental attitude of the Elizabethan gentleman who 
 carried a sword, or the Southern gentleman who car- 
 ries a revolver. He has not yet entrusted himself in 
 all things to the protection of his government. He 
 looks upon the state as an organization for carrying on 
 foreign wars, but feels that it is his own prerogative 
 to defend his property, his household, and his honor 
 with his own right arm. 
 
 "This temper, still strong in all the South, is natu- 
 rally strongest in the mountains, where as a matter of 
 fact the government has not always been able to inspire 
 either confidence or fear. The conditions which some- 
 times justified arming for self-defense on the frontier 
 are likely to be present more or less in many parts of 
 the South, and particularly in the mountains. 
 
 "The operations of the government are weakened 
 by the fact that it has never had the thorough-going 
 efficiency known in some other places, and the further 
 fact that mountains furnish convenient refuges for those 
 who defy the law. Furthermore, in Southern commu- 
 
 1 Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders, pp. 216, 217, 219. 
 
314 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 nities which have received no foreign influx and sent 
 out few settlers to the West, everybody is related by 
 ties of blood to everybody else. In rural life this counts 
 for much. Family loyalty requires that one support his 
 kindred in court and quarrel to the last traceable degree. 
 . . . [Yet] there is probably no mountain country 
 in which ten per cent of the population have ever been 
 engaged hi these lawless proceedings. The mass of the 
 people is made up of simple, primitive people, showing 
 the strong traits of then 1 race independence, respect 
 for religion, family affection, patriotism." 1 
 
 Undaunted before difficulties, daring and resource- 
 ful, able to make the farthest use of the most limited 
 opportunities, is the best type of the mountaineer: 
 " Where the struggle with nature has not too deeply 
 depressed the body and mind, all the splendid homely 
 virtues of the pioneer survive, and often take on rare 
 attractiveness in the sons and daughters of the mount- 
 tains. Their delayed development conserves much that this 
 age lacks of unspoiled elemental manhood and simplicity 
 of spirit both profoundly urgent moral needs of today. 
 Beneath a reckless individualism and ignorant conceit, 
 one discerns resources of sturdy independence. The 
 mountaineer faces his hard circumstances with a heart 
 at once undaunted and resigned. A saving sense of hu- 
 mor breaks every fall and turns defeat into more than 
 half victory. Having shrewdly fathomed human nature 
 as it exists in his narrow range, he finds his judgments 
 surprizingly just and accurate when opportunity comes 
 to apply them to the larger world. He undertakes un- 
 wonted responsibility with a certain honorable large- 
 ness and perspective; thus showing that wisdom is 
 born of insight rather than of mere multiplication of 
 experiences. Lincoln was such a man and had such wis- 
 dom. ' He that is faithful in that which is least is faith- 
 ful also in much.' Training in the school of adversity 
 often develops in the mountaineer a practical capacity 
 
 1 William Goodell Frost, in Independent, 1912, pp. 709, 711. 
 
A Chosen People 315 
 
 for making small resources count which spells marvelous 
 success when once the instruments of modern life are 
 put into his hands. Recently I watched a mountain 
 student's first inspection of the newly installed hot-air 
 furnace in a mission school dormitory. The moun- 
 taineer, like the Indian, studiously refrains from con- 
 fessing surprize at the unaccustomed; but this boy's 
 curiosity and interest got the better of him. Soon he 
 was freely speculating on the operation and success of 
 the innovation; yet not for a moment did he admit 
 to the world or to himself that he was not its potential 
 master. He seemed to me typical of the mountaineer 
 facing modern civilization. The mood of the forward- 
 looking among them is the mood of conquest. Put it to 
 the test, by furnishing it an opportunity, and it will 
 justify itself as it has done ten thousand times." 
 
 These traits and powers, admirable and useful as 
 they are, might yet miss their chief value if ununited 
 and uninspired by the power of religion. But, reinforced 
 by them, and binding them together for service, is the 
 predominant religious nature of the mountaineer: "The 
 mountaineer lives 'the simple life 7 in close touch with 
 nature in its varied manifestations. From nature, but 
 more yet from the Scriptures, and perhaps principally 
 from strong heredity, he has acquired an absolute faith 
 in a personal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent 
 God, who has to do with him in 'all the good and ill 
 that checker life.' He believes in the substitutionary sac- 
 rifice of Jesus as the Saviour of the world. He has no 
 doubt that Jesus will 'come to judge the quick and 
 the dead'; while 'the forgiveness of sins, the resurrec- 
 tion of the body, and the life everlasting' are unques- 
 tioned tenets of his creed. 
 
 "His faith is not merely intellectual or theoretical, 
 but it takes strong hold of his thinking and, in many 
 ases, of his life and conduct. The Southern mountain- 
 eers are grave by nature. The few native ballads that 
 
 J H. Paul Douglass, Christian Reconstruction in the South, pp. 33 * 3?2. 
 
316 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 they have are, like those of most mountain dwellers, 
 somewhat weird and are written in the minor key. The 
 native character is a serious one. Nothing interests a 
 mountain audience so much as does a debate on some 
 question of Biblical interpretation or doctrinal dispute; 
 and where the Spirit of God is moving upon hearts, 
 nothing holds the attention more fixedly than does a 
 discussion of some point of Christian duty. The one 
 book that is read in the Appalachians more than are all 
 others combined is the Bible; and many readers have 
 an intimate acquaintance with its contents. 
 
 "As has been said of the race of Shem, it may be af- 
 firmed of the mountain race, 'It has a genius for relig- 
 ion/ Too often, as everywhere else, this religious 
 nature is dwarfed and misshapen by environment and na- 
 tural depravity; but though stunted and deformed, it 
 often, by many a token that is recognized by the quick 
 vision of sympathetic lovers of souls, proclaims its la- 
 tent strength and future possibilities. There is always 
 something responsive to appeal to, in the man of the 
 mountains." 
 
 To see a promise of this power, you have but to step 
 into the mountains and witness the earnest evangelism 
 of such preachers as "Proctor Bill": "I shall never 
 forget his manner, or his matter. Both were peculiar 
 and unique. He spoke with tremendous earnestness and 
 energy. He was Boanerges, in action. No one could 
 doubt his sincerity, nor his courage, yet his language 
 was as simple as a child's, for he knew no other, being an 
 unlearned man. It was the speech of the common people, 
 who heard Jesus gladly. It was largely the language of 
 the Bible. 
 
 "It was in the summer-time, but he had on a suit 
 of whiter clothes, and the effort of speaking covered 
 him with perspiration. He was profoundly moved, and 
 he moved the people as few college men could have 
 done. 
 
 1 Samuel T. Wilson, The Southern Mountaineers, pp. 154-156. 
 
A Chosen People 317 
 
 "As to the matter of his discourse, I was as much 
 surprized. It was largely scriptural and entirely evangeli- 
 cal. His quotations were apt and correct, and the won- 
 der grew when I learned how and where he was reared. 
 
 "I shall never forget his introduction. As near as 
 I can recollect it, he said : ' My friends, you know me. I 
 was born and bred in this country. On this very spot 
 where this schoolhouse stands I once sold and drank 
 whiskey. Left an orphan by a good father, I had no 
 one to teach me to do right. My mother was a god- 
 less woman. I never heard her pray in my life. When a 
 boy, I tried to kill Bob Hill for striking a smaller boy. 
 As I grew older and larger I grew more wicked and des- 
 perate. In drinking, gambling, and fighting I was a 
 leader. Just over this hill I tried to kill a man for an 
 insult. I was tried and sent to the penitentiary for three 
 years. I had never learned to read, and I never owned 
 a Bible. I neither feared God nor regarded man. 
 
 "In the penitentiary, I was compelled to attend 
 the prison worship on the Sabbath day. A Mr. Mor- 
 rison preached, and God sent his words to my heart. 
 I felt I was a lost sinner, and for twelve days I could 
 neither eat nor sleep. I lay in my cell, the most miser- 
 able of men, and cried to God for pardon. Blessed be 
 his name, he heard my cry and pardoned my sins and 
 saved my soul. I rose up a new man, and determined to 
 read God's Word. I was then thirty-nine years old, 
 but, by hard work, I learned to read, and determined 
 to tell others what he had done for my soul. This is 
 why I am here today/ This is only a bare outline of 
 what he said. 
 
 "It was a remarkable discourse and produced a pro- 
 found impression. Men knew he was honest and ear- 
 nest, and not afraid to say what he believed. Since the 
 day he left the penitentiary, he has been trying to preach 
 the gospel in the very country which knew his sin and 
 shame. Men hear him and wonder at the wonderful 
 
3i8 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 change. Many have been led to Christ through his 
 ministry. 
 
 " Having no horse, he walks across the mountains 
 to his appointments. Having no money, he has no 
 books nor clerical clothes. His only possessions con- 
 sist of a wife and four little girls and a boy, on a rented 
 mountain farm. This he works through the week; 
 and walks to his appointments on Sundays, sometimes 
 fifteen miles." 1 
 
 It is the faith of the mountaineer's helpers that from 
 the seed sown there will come a more bounteous har- 
 vest, a wider husbandry, than from an equal labor any- 
 where else bestowed: "I make the statement more as 
 a hope than as a prophecy, but I feel sure of my ground 
 hi saying that these North American Highlanders will 
 yet become a grand race; a race that shall stand for 
 freedom political and industrial; a race that can no more 
 endure unjust rule than it can thrive in the tainted ah* 
 of the low country. Types come and pass in nature's 
 scheme of economy, but not until their usefulness is 
 ended. The mountaineers are a young people, not 
 ready to pass away; then* strength lies dormant, await- 
 ing its hour. To the mountains, in tune to come, we may 
 look for great men, thinkers as well as workers, leaders 
 of religious and poetic thought, and statesmen above 
 all. So much passionate loyalty cannot be lost to the 
 government, must find expression in redeemers of prac- 
 tical politics as well as in military service. From the moun- 
 tains will yet arise a quickening of American ideals 
 and American life." 5 
 
 "If we enter into this field merely to denude the hills 
 of timber and to penetrate them for coal, our work 
 degenerates into a selfish enterprise, and the mountain 
 people may become a positive menace to our country. 
 If the mountaineers are to be given up entirely to the 
 tender mercies of commercialism, we might as well 
 
 1 Edward O. Guerrant, The Galax Gatherers, pp. 69-71. 
 
 2 Emma B. Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains, pp. 99 200. 
 
A Chosen People 319 
 
 give up all hope of ever recruiting our strength from theirs. 
 They must be given financial aid in their educational 
 struggle, so that they can reach a knowledge of them- 
 selves and their capabilities. They need to become 
 acquainted with the best elements of modern civiliza- 
 tion, and they need to be left in profound ignorance of 
 all else. Their individuality must not be merged into 
 the monotonous life of our own communities. Their 
 vigorous traits of character must be preserved intact. 
 The native shrewdness that is shown in escaping the 
 vigilance of revenue officers and the courage displayed 
 in the management of the feuds, should be turned to 
 higher uses. Their contempt of physical harm and their 
 devotion to principle may be of inestimable value in the 
 maintenance and propagation of spiritual truth. Their 
 only need of others is to aid in helping them to know 
 themselves, and after that aid has been given, 'let us 
 lift our eyes to the mountains, from whence cometh our 
 help/ 
 
 "Again, it is a mistake to suppose that mission 
 work in the mountains is a work of charity, or a one- 
 sided philanthropy, where much is given and nothing 
 is received in return. The returns are immediate, and 
 of far greater value than the investment. As it is, the 
 whole country might, with profit, take lessons from these 
 hardy mountaineers in love of home and country, in 
 hospitality, in unwavering friendship, in adherence to 
 conviction and in reverence to God. They need no mas- 
 ter come from abroad to teach them patience under 
 difficulties, or endurance under adversities. In the homely 
 virtues they are our peers, and in the matter of strength 
 and courage they are the masters of all." 1 
 
 The optimism that sees in man's history a natural 
 evolution from base to noble, that hopes therefrom a 
 development of the race into demi-gods, and that looks 
 to the upbuilding of any people as a factor in that apothe- 
 osis, is doomed to a disappointment as certain as the 
 
 Professor McDiarmid, in leaflet of the Soul Winners' Society. 
 
320 The Men of the Mountains 
 
 Judgment Day. But the optimism that is based upon the 
 regenerating power of the religion of Jesus Christ; that, 
 while seeking the elevation of all men, disappoints 
 itself with no hope of a universal salvation; that, above 
 all, is inspired with the certainty of an early and com- 
 plete triumph of good over evil, through the advent of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ that optimism is true, and sure, 
 and unconquerable. In that spirit of optimism the 
 Christian world may look with confidence into the 
 swiftly coming clouds of battle; and, instructed by the 
 Word of God, may expect the reinforcement necessary 
 for victory. And for such a reinforcement we may on 
 earth, as well as toward heaven, lift up our eyes to the 
 hills, whence cometh our help. For "the God of the 
 hills" whom the Syrians feared has kept in reserve in the 
 mountains a chosen people who shall have a mighty part 
 in the closing of the wars of the Lord. 
 
 16*75'$*) 
 

 
 DUE AS STAMPED Rimyy 
 
 MAY 15 1980 
 
 NO. DD6 , 60m