"But," continued Uncle Ephraim, "let me leave that sorrowful tale for a spell, and go back to the good old days when there wa'n't no sech things as wars betwixt friends and neighbors--the days when our forbears first rid acrost the high ridges from Old Virginny or North Cyar'liny and along these rocky creeks, and tuck up land in these norrow valleys. A rude race they was, but a strong, with the blood of old England and bonny Scotland in their veins, and in their hearts the fear of naught; a rude race, but a free, chasing the deer and the b'ar and the wild turkey and the Indian, tending their craps with a hoe in one hand and a gun in t'other; a rude race, but a friendly, banding together again' all foes, helping one another in all undertakings. Some of 'em, like my grandsir, the old cap'n, come in to live on land that was granted 'em because they had fit under Washington; t'others jest wandered in and tuck up what pleased 'em. "Well, atter they settled theirselves in this rugged, penned-in land, then what happened to 'em? Well, right there was the trouble--_nothing_ never happened. Here they was, shut in for uppards of a hunderd year, multiplying fast, spreading up from the main creeks to the branches and hollows, but never bettering their condition--you might say, worsening hit. For before long the game was all kilt off, and life become the turrible struggle hit still is, jest to keep food in our mouths--raising craps on land that's nigh straight-up-and-down, like we have to. And while a many of the first settlers, like my grandsir, had been knowledgeable men, with larning, their offsprings growed up in the wilderness without none, because there wa'n't no money to send the young-uns out to school, or to fotch larning in to 'em. And the second crap, of which I was one, was wusser and ignoranter still, being raised up maybe, like me, eighty mile from a schoolhouse or church-house; and the third was wusser and meaner yet; and so on down to now, when they hain't no better, though there is a few pindling destruct schools here and yan. "And about the onliest times in all them years our folks found out there was a world outside these mountains was when the country sont in a call to fight hits battles. Then we allus poured forth, rejoicing--like when there was trouble again with the British, and we mustered under Old Hickory behind them cotton-bales and palmetty-logs at New Orleens; and then later, when Mexico got sassy; and then when the States tuck sides and lined up, you know how we fit through them four year--mostly for the Union; this here stiff right arm I fotched back remembers me of hit; then there's this here leetle war in Cuby, too, not long finished.