PAGE "She was the only mother I knowed," Frontispiece "Them what hain't had trouble ain't had no cause to look fur the Lord," 48 "Yes, I d-d-d-do say so, a-a-a-atter a f-f-f-fashion." 80 "Kotch 'em stealin' hosses, I reckon." 128 "Well," Margaret exclaimed, "I never was so surprised." 208 "Go on erway an' let me talk ter myse'f. You kain't talk." 240 "If you air the Jedge, I am sorter diserp'inted in you." 288 "Jedge, there ain't no better man than he is, an' for the Lord's sake don't hang him." 304 "THE STARBUCKS." [From the Drama of the Same Name.] CHAPTER I. THE PEOPLE OF THE HILLS. In every age of the world people who live close to nature have, by the more cultivated, been classed as peculiar. An ignorant nation is brutal, but an uneducated community in the midst of an enlightened nation is quaint, unconsciously softened by the cultivation and refinement of institutions that lie far away. In such communities live poets with lyres attuned to drollery. Moved by the grandeurs of nature, the sunrise, the sunset, the storm among the mountains, the tiller of the gullied hill-side field is half dumb, but with those apt "few words which are seldom spent in vain," he charicatures his own sense of beauty, mingling rude metaphor with the language of "manage" to a horse. I find that I am speaking of a certain community in Tennessee. And perhaps no deductions drawn from a general view of civilization would apply to these people. Some of their feuds, it is said, may be traced back to the highlands of Scotland, and it is true that many of their expressions seem to come from old books which they surely have never read, but they do not eat oats, nor do they stand in sour awe of Sunday. What religion they have is a pleasure to them. In the log meeting-house they pray and sing, sometimes with a half-open eye on a fellow to be "thrashed" on the following day for not having voted as he agreed; "Amen" comes fervently from a corner made warm by the ardor of the repentant sinner; "Hallelujah!" is shouted from the mourner's bench, and a woman in nervous ecstasy pops her streaming hair; but the average man has come to talk horse beneath the trees, and the young fellow with sun-burnt down on his lip is there slily to hold the hand of a maid frightened with happiness and boastingly to whisper shy words of love. "Do you like Sam Bracken?" he inquires. "Not much." "If you like him much, I bet I can whup him. Like Steve Smith?" "Not so powerful well." "I can whup him." "Bet you can't." "You wait." And the chances are that unless she modifies her statement the Smith boy will be compelled to answer for the crime of her compliment.