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The articles herein reprinted fromHarper's andThe Century magazinesrepresent work done at intervals during the period that the author waswriting the tales already published under the title ofFlute andViolin.

It was his plan that with each descriptive article should go a shortstory dealing with the same subject, and this plan was in part wroughtout. Thus, with the article entitled "Uncle Tom at Home" goes the taleentitled "Two Gentlemen of Kentucky;" and with the article entitled "AHome of the Silent Brotherhood" goes the tale entitled "The White Cowl."In the same way, there were to be short stories severally dealing withthe other subjects embraced in this volume. But having in part wroughtout this plan, the author has let it rest—not finally, perhaps,but because in the mean time he has found himself engaged with otherthemes.[iv]
[v]

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE BLUE-GRASS REGION

One might well name it Saxon grass, so much is it at home in SaxonEngland, so like the loveliest landscapes of green Saxon England has itmade other landscapes on which dwell a kindred race in America, and soakin is it to the type of nature that is peculiarly Saxon: being ahardy, kindly, beautiful, nourishing stock; loving rich lands and apt tofind out where they lie; uprooting inferior aborigines, but stoutlydefending its new domain against all invaders; paying taxes well, withprofits to boot; thriving best in temperate latitudes and checkeredsunshine; benevolent to flocks and herds; and allying itself closely tothe history of any people whose content lies in simple plenty andhabitual peace—the perfect squire-and-yeoman type of grasses.

In the earliest spring nothing is sooner afield to contest possession ofthe land than the blue-grass. Its little green spear-points are thefirst to pierce the soft rich earth, and array themselves in countlesscompanies over the rolling landscapes, while its roots reach out inevery direction for securer foothold. So early does this take place,that a late hoar-frost[4]will now and then mow all these bristling spear-points down. Sometimes aslow-falling sleet will incase each emerald blade in glittering silver;but the sun by-and-by melts the silver, leaving the blade unhurt. Or alight snow-fall will cover tufts of it over, making pavilions andcolonnades with white roofs resting on green pillars. The roofs vanishanon, and the columns go on silently rising. But usually the finalrigors of the season prove harmless to the blue-grass. One sees it mostbeautiful in the spring, just before the seed stalks have shot upwardfrom the flowing tufts, and while the thin, smooth, polished blades,having risen to their greatest height, are beginning to bend, or breakand fall over on themselves and their nether fellows from sheerluxuriance. The least observant eye is now constrained to note thatblue-grass is the characteristic element of the Kentucky turf—thefirst element of beauty in the Kentucky landscape. Over the stretches ofwoodland pasture, over the meadows and the lawns, by the edges ofturnpike and lane, in the fence corners—wherever its seed has beenallowed to flourish—it spreads a verdure so soft in fold and finein texture, so entrancing by its freshness and fertility, that it lookslike a deep-lying, thick-matted emerald moss. One thinks of it, not assome heavy, velvet-like carpet spread over the earth, but as some light,seamless veil that has fallen delicately around it, and that might beblown away by a passing breeze.[5]

After this you will not see the blue-grass so beautiful. The seed ripensin June. Already the slender seed stalks have sprung up above theuniform green level, bearing on their summits the fuzzy, plumy, purplishseed-vessels; and save the soft, feathery undulations of these as thewind sweeps over them, the beauty of the blue-grass is gone. Moreover,certain robust and persistent weeds[6]and grasses have been growing apace, roughening and diversifying thesward, so that the vista is less charming. During July and August theblue-grass lies comparatively inactive, resting from fructification, andmissing, as well, frequent showers to temper the sunshine. In seasons ofsevere drought it even dies quite away, leaving the surface of the earthas bare and brown as a winter landscape or arid plain. Where it has beenclosely grazed, one may, in walking over it, stir such a dust as onewould raise on a highway; and the upturned, half-exposed rootlets seementirely dead. But the moderated heats and the gentle rains that usuallycome with the passing of summer bring on a second vigorous growth, andin the course of several weeks the landscape is covered with a verdurerivalling the luxuriance of spring.

There is something incongruous in this marvellousautumnal rejuvenescence of the blue-grass. All natureappears content and resting. The grapes on thesunward slopes have received their final coloring ofpurple and gold; the heavy mast is beginning todrop in the forest, followed by the silent lapse ofrusset and crimson leaves; the knee-deep aftermathhas paled its green in the waiting autumn fields;the plump children are stretching out their nut-stainedhands towards the first happy fire-glow onchill, dark evenings; and the cricket has left thesere, dead garden for a winter home at the hearth.[7]Then, lo! as if by some freakish return of the springto the edge of winter the pastures are suddenly asfresh and green as those of May. The effect onone who has the true landscape passion is transportingand bewildering. Such contrasts of colorit is given one to study nowhere but in blue-grasslands. It is as if the seasons were met to do somegreat piece of brocading. One sees a new meaningin Poe's melancholy thought—the leaves of themany-colored grass.

All winter the blue-grass continues green—it isalwaysgreen, of course, neverblue—and it evengrows a little, except when the ground is frozen.Thus, year after year, drawing needful nourishmentfrom the constantly disintegrating limestone below,flourishes here as nowhere else in the world thiswonderful grass.

Even while shivering in the bleak winds of March,the young lambs frolicked away from the distentteats of the ewes, with growing relish for its hardysucculence, and by-and-by they were taken into marketthe sooner and the fatter for its developing qualities.During the long summer, foaming pails ofmilk and bowls of golden butter have testified to theKentucky housewife with what delight the cowshave ruminated on the stores gathered each plentifulday. The Kentucky farmer knows that the distantmetropolitan beef-eater will in time have good reasonto thank it for yonder winding herd of sleek[8]young steers that are softly brushing their roundedsides with their long, white, silky tails, while theyplunge their puffing noses into its depths and tearaway huge mouthfuls of its inexhaustible richness.Thorough-bred sire and dam and foal in paddocksor deeper pastures have drawn from it form andquality and organization: hardness and solidity ofbone, strength of tendon, firmness and elasticity ofmuscle, power of nerve, and capacity of lung. Eventhe Falstaff porkers, their eyes gleaming with gluttonousenjoyment, have looked to it for the shapingof their posthumous hams and the padding of theirlong backbones in depths of snowy lard. In wintermules and sheep and horses paw away the snow toget at the green shoots that lie covered over beneaththe full, rank growth of autumn, or they findit attractive provender in their ricks. For all thatlive upon it, it is perennial and abundant, beautifuland beneficent—the first great natural factor in theprosperity of the Kentucky people. What wonderif the Kentuckian, like the Greek of old, should wishto have even his paradise well set in grass; or that,with a knowing humor, he should smile at David forsaying, "He maketh his grass to grow upon themountains," inasmuch as the only grass worth speakingof grows on his beloved plain![9]

But if grass is the first element in the lovely Kentuckylandscape, as it must be in every other one, byno means should it be thought sole or chief. InDante, as Ruskin points out, whenever the countryis to be beautiful, we come into open air and openmeadows. Homer places the sirens in a meadowwhen they are to sing. Over the blue-grass, therefore,one walks into the open air and open meadowsof the blue-grass land.

This has long had reputation for being one of thevery beautiful spots of the earth, and it is worthwhile to consider those elements of natural scenerywherein the beauty consists.

One might say, first, that the landscape possesseswhat is so very rare even in beautiful landscapes—thequality of gracefulness. Nowhere does one encountervertical lines or violent slopes; nor are thereperfectly level stretches like those that make thegreen fields monotonous in the Dutch lowlands.The dark, finely sifted soil lies deep over the limestonehills, filling out their chasms to evenness, androunding their jagged or precipitous edges, verymuch as a heavy snow at night will leave the morninglandscape with mitigated ruggedness and softer[12]curves. The long, slow action of water has furthermoulded everything into symmetry, so that the lowancient hills descend to the valleys in exquisite foldsand uninterrupted slopes. The whole great plainundulates away league after league towards the distanthorizon in an endless succession of gentle convexsurfaces—like the easy swing of the sea—presentinga panorama of subdued swells and retiringsurges. Everything in the blue-grass country isbillowy and afloat. The spirit of nature is intermediatebetween violent energy and complete repose;and the effect of this mild activity is keptfrom monotony by the accidental perspective ofposition, creating variety of details.

One traces this quality of gracefulness in thelabyrinthine courses of the restful streams, in thedisposition of forest masses, in the free, unstudiedsuccession of meadow, field, and lawn. Surely it isjust this order of low hill scenery, just these buoyantundulations, that should be covered with the blue-grass.Had Hawthorne ever looked on this landscapewhen most beautiful, he could never have saidof England that "no other country will ever havethis charm of lovely verdure."

Characteristically beautiful spots on the blue-grasslandscape are the woodland pastures. A Kentuckywheat field, a Kentucky meadow, a Kentucky lawn,is but a field, a meadow, a lawn, found elsewhere;but a Kentucky sylvan slope has a loveliness unique[13]and local. Rightly do poets make pre-eminentlybeautiful countries abound in trees. John Burroughs,writing with enthusiasm of English woods, has saidthat "in midsummer the hair of our trees seems tostand on end; the woods have a frightened look, oras if they were just recovering from a debauch." Thisis not true of the Kentucky woods, unless it be insome season of protracted drought. The foliage ofthe Kentucky trees is not thin nor dishevelled, theleaves crowd thick to the very ends of the boughs,and spread themselves full to the sky, making, wherethey are close together, under-spaces of green gloomscarcely shot through by sunbeams. Indeed, oneoften finds here the perfection of tree forms. Imean that rare development which brings the extremitiesof the boughs to the very limit of the curvethat nature intends the tree to define as the peculiarshape of its species. Any but the most favorableconditions leave the outline jagged, faulty, and untrue.Here and there over the blue-grass landscapeone's eye rests on a cone-shaped, or dome-shaped, orinverted pear-shaped, or fan-shaped tree. Nor arefulness of leafage and perfection of form alone to benoted; pendency of boughs is another distinguishingfeature. One who loves and closely studies treeswill note here the comparative absence of woodystiffness. It is expected that the willow and the elmshould droop their branches. Here the same characteristicstrikes you in the wild cherry, the maple,[14]and the sycamore—even in great walnuts and ashesand oaks; and I have occasionally discovered exceedinggrace of form in hackberries (which usuallylook paralytic and as if waiting to hobble away oncrutches), in locusts, and in the harsh hickories—lovedby Thoreau.

But to return to the woodland pastures. They arethe last vestiges of that unbroken primeval forestwhich, together with cane-brakes and pea-vines, coveredthe face of the country when it was first beheldby the pioneers. No blue-grass then. In thesewoods the timber has been so cut out that the remainingtrees often stand clearly revealed in theirentire form, their far-reaching boughs perhaps noteven touching those of their nearest neighbor, orinterlacing them with ineffectual fondness. Thereis something pathetic in the sight, and in the thoughtof those innumerable stricken ones that in yearsagone were dismembered for cord-wood and kitchenstoves and the vast fireplaces of old-time negrocabins. In the well kept blue-grass pasture undergrowthand weeds are annually cut down, so that themassive trunks are revealed from a distance; thebetter because the branches seldom are lower thanfrom ten to twenty feet above the earth. Thus in itsdaily course the sun strikes every point beneath thebroad branches, and nourishes the blue-grass up tothe very roots. All savagery, all wildness, is takenout of these pastures; they are full of tenderness and[15][16][17]repose—of the utmost delicacy and elegance. Overthe graceful earth spreads the flowing green grass,uniform and universal. Above this stand the full,swelling trunks—warm browns and pale grays—oftenlichen-flecked or moss-enamelled. Over theseexpand the vast domes and canopies of leafage. Andfalling down upon these comes the placid sunshinethrough a sky of cerulean blueness, and past thesnowy zones of gleaming cloud. The very individualityof the tree comes out as it never can in denserplaces. Always the most truly human object in still,voiceless nature, it here throws out its arms to youwith imploring tenderness, with what Wordsworthcalled "the soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs."One cannot travel far in the blue-grass countrywithout coming upon one of these woodland strips.

Of the artistic service rendered the landscape ofthis region by other elements of scenery—atmosphereand cloud and sky—much might, but littlewill, be said. The atmosphere is sometimes crystalline,sometimes full of that intense repose of dazzlinglight which one, without ever having seenthem, knows to be on canvases of Turner. Then,again, it is amber-hued, or tinged with soft blue,graduated to purple shadows on the horizon. Duringthe greater part of the year the cloud-sky is oneof strongly outlined forms; the great white cumulidrift over, with every majesty of design and graceof grouping; but there come, in milder seasons,[18]many days when one may see three cloud belts inthe heavens at the same time, the lowest far, faraway, and the highest brushing softly, as it were,past the very dome of the inviolable blue. Youturn your eye downward to see the light wanderingwistfully among the low distant hills, and the sweettremulous shadows crossing the meadows with timidcadences. Itis a beautiful country; the Kentuckyskies are not the cold, hard, brilliant, hideous thingsthat so many writers on nature style American skies(usually meaning New England skies), as contrastedwith skies European. They are at times ineffablywarm in tone and tender in hue, giving aerial distancesmagical and fathomless above, and throwingdown upon the varied soft harmonious greens of thelandscape below, upon its rich browns and weatheredgrays and whole scheme of terrene colors, aflood of radiance as bountiful and transfiguring as itis chastened and benign.

But why make a description of the blue-grassregion of Kentucky? What one sees may be onlywhat one feels—only intricate affinities betweennature and self that were developed long ago, andhave become too deep to be viewed as relations orillusions. What two human beings find the samethings in the face of a third, or in nature's? Descriptionsof scenery are notoriously disappointingto those whose taste in landscape is different, or whohave little or no sentiment for pure landscape beauty.[19]So one coming hither might be sorely disappointed.No mountains; no strips of distant blue gleamingwater nor lawny cascades; no grandeur; no majesty;no wild picturesqueness. The chords of landscapeharmony are very simple; nothing but softness andamenity, grace and repose, delicacy and elegance.One might fail at seasons to find even these. Thisis a beautiful country, but not always; there comedays when the climate shows as ugly a temper aspossible. Not a little of the finest timber has beenlost by storms. The sky is for days one great blanketof grewsome gray. In winter you laugh withchattering teeth at those who call this "the South,"the thermometer perhaps registering from twelve tofifteen degrees below zero. In summer the name isbut a half-truth. Only by visiting this region duringsome lovely season, or by dwelling here from year toyear, and seeing it in all the humors of storm andsunshine, can one love it.

III

But the ideal landscape of daily life must not bemerely beautiful: it should be useful. With whatmay not the fertility of this region be compared?With the valleys of the Schuylkill, the Shenandoah,and the Genesee; with the richest lands of Lombardy[20]and Belgium; with the most fertile districts ofEngland. The evidences of this fertility are everywhere.Nature, even in those places where she hasbeen forced for nearly a hundred years to bear muchat the hands of a not always judicious agriculture,unceasingly struggles to cover herself with bushesof all sorts and nameless annual weeds and grasses.Even the blue-grass contends in vain for completepossession of its freehold. One is forced to note,even though without sentiment, the rich pageant oftransitory wild bloom thatwill force a passage foritself over the landscape: firmaments of golden dandelionsin the lawns; vast beds of violets, gray andblue, in dim glades; patches of flaunting sunflowersalong the road-sides; purple thistles; and, of deeperpurple still and far denser growth, beautiful ironweedin the woods; with many clumps of alderbloom, and fast-extending patches of perennial blackberry,and groups of delicate May-apples, and wholefields of dog-fennel and golden-rod. And why mentionindomitable dock and gigantic poke, burrs andplenteous nightshade, and mullein and plantain, withdusty gray-green ragweed and thrifty fox-tail?—aninnumerable company.

Maize, pumpkins, and beans grow together in afield—a triple crop. Nature perfects them all, yetmust do more. Scarce have the ploughs left thefurrows before there springs up a varied wild growth,and a fourth crop, morning-glories, festoon the tall[21][22][23]tassels of the Indian corn ere the knife can be laidagainst the stalk. Harvest fields usually have theirstubble well hidden by a rich, deep aftermath. Gardenpatches, for all that hoe and rake can do, commonlylook at last like spots given over to weedsand grasses. Sidewalks quickly lose their borders.Pavements would soon disappear from sight; thewinding of a distant stream through the fields canbe readily followed by the line of vegetation thatrushes there to fight for life, from the minutest creepingvines to forest trees. Every neglected fencecorner becomes an area for a fresh colony. Leaveone of these sweet, humanized woodland pasturesalone for a short period of years, it runs wild with adense young natural forest; vines shoot up to thetops of the tallest trees, and then tumble over ingreen sprays on the heads of others.

A kind, true, patient, self-helpful soil if ever therewas one! Some of these lands after being cultivated,not always scientifically, but always withoutartificial fertilizers, for more than three-quarters ofa century, are now, if properly treated, equal in productivenessto the best farming lands of England.The farmer from one of these old fields will take twodifferent crops in a season. He gets two cuttingsof clover from a meadow, and has rich grazing left.A few counties have at a time produced three-fourthsof the entire hemp product of the United States.The State itself has at different times stood first in[24]wheat and hemp and Indian corn and wool and tobaccoand flax, although half its territory is coveredwith virgin forests. When lands under impropertreatment have become impoverished, their productivenesshas been restored, not by artificial fertilizers,but by simple rotation of crops, with nature'shelp. The soil rests on decomposable limestone,which annually gives up to it in solution all theessential mineral plant food that judicious agricultureneeds.

Soil and air and climate—the entire aggregate ofinfluences happily co-operative—make the finestgrazing. The Kentucky horse has carried the reputationof the country into regions where even thepeople could never have made it known. Your expertin the breeding of thoroughbreds will tell youthat the muscular fibre of the blue-grass animal is tothat of the Pennsylvania-bred horses as silk to cotton,and the texture of his bone, compared with thelatter's, as ivory beside pumice-stone. If taken tothe Eastern States, in twelve generations he is nolonger the same breed of horse. His blood fertilizesAmerican stock the continent over. Jersey cattlebrought here increase in size. Sires come to Kentuckyto make themselves and their offspring famous.

The people themselves are a fecund race. Out ofthis State have gone more to enrich the citizenshipof the nation than all the other States together have[25]been able to send into it. So at least your loyal-heartedKentuckian looks at the rather delicate subjectof inter-State migration. By actual measurementthe Kentucky volunteers during the Civil Warwere found to surpass all others (except Tennesseeans)in height and weight, whether coming from theUnited States or various countries of Europe. Butfor the great-headed Scandinavians, they would havebeen first, also, in circumference around the foreheadand occiput. Still, Kentucky has little or noliterature.

One element that should be conspicuous in fertilecountries does not strike the observer here—muchbeautiful water; no other State has a frontage ofnavigable rivers equal to that of Kentucky. Butthere are few limpid, lovely, smaller streams. Wonderfulsprings there are, and vast stores of water inthe cavernous earth below; but the landscape lacks[26]the charm of this element—clear, rushing, musical,abundant. The watercourses, ever winding andgraceful, are apt to be either swollen and turbid orinsignificant; of late years the beds seem less fullalso—a change consequent, perhaps, upon the denudationof forest lands. In a dry season the historicElkhorn seems little more than a ganglion of precariouspools.

The best artists who have painted cultivatedground have always been very careful to limit thearea of the crops. Undoubtedly the substitutionof a more scientific agriculture for the loose andeasy ways of primitive husbandry has changed thekey-note of rural existence from a tender Virgiliansentiment to a coarser strain, and as life becomesmore unsophisticated it grows less picturesque.When the work of the old-time reaper is done by afat man with a flaming face, sitting on a cast-ironmachine, and smoking a cob pipe, the artist will leavethe fields. Figures have a terrible power to destroysentiment in pure landscape; so have houses. Whenone leaves nature, pure and simple, in the blue-grasscountry, he must accordingly pick his way circumspectlyor go amiss in his search for the beautiful.If his taste lead him to desire in landscapes the[27]finest evidences of human labor, the high artificialfinish of a minutely careful civilization, he will herefind great disappointment. On the other hand, ifhe delight in those exquisite rural spots of the OldWorld with picturesque bits of homestead architectureand the perfection of horticultural and unobtrusivebotanical details, he will be no less aggrieved.What he sees here is neither the most scientificfarming, simply economic and utilitarian—raw andrude—nor that cultivated desire for the elements innature to be so moulded by the hand of man thatthey will fuse harmoniously and inextricably withhis habitations and his work.

The whole face of the country is taken up by asuccession of farms. Each of these, except the verysmall ones, presents to the eye the variation ofmeadow, field, and woodland pasture, together withthe homestead and the surrounding grounds of orchard,garden, and lawn. The entire landscape isthus caught in a vast net-work of fences. The Kentuckianretains his English ancestors' love of enclosures;but the uncertain tenure of estates beyond asingle generation does not encourage him to makethem the most durable. One does, indeed, noticehere and there throughout the country stone-wallsof blue limestone, that give an aspect of substantialrepose and comfortable firmness to the scenery. Butthe farmer dreads their costliness, even though hisown hill-sides furnish him an abundant quarry. He[28]knows that unless the foundations are laid like thoseof a house, the thawing earth will unsettle them, thatwater, freezing as it trickles through the crevices,will force the stones out of their places, and thatbreaches will be made in them by boys on a huntwhenever and wherever it shall be necessary to getat a lurking or sorely pressed hare. It is ludicrouslytrue that the most terrible destroyer of stone-wallsin this country is the small boy hunting a hare, withan appetite for game that knows no geological impediment.Therefore one hears of fewer limestonefences of late years, some being torn down and supersededby plank fences or post-and-rail fences, orby the newer barbed-wire fence—an economic devicethat will probably become as popular in regionswhere stone and timber were never to be had as inothers, like this, where timber has been ignorantly,wantonly sacrificed. It is a pleasure to know thatone of the most expensive, and certainly the mosthideous, fences ever in vogue here is falling intodisuse. I mean the worm-fence—called worm becauseit wriggled over the landscape like a longbrown caterpillar, the stakes being the bristles alongits back, and because it now and then ate up a noblewalnut-tree close by, or a kingly oak, or frightened,trembling ash—a worm that decided the destiny offorests. A pleasure it is, too, to come occasionallyupon an Osage orange hedge-row, which is a greeneternal fence. But you will not find many of these.[29]It is generally too much to ask of an American, eventhough he be a Kentuckian, to wait for a hedge togrow and make him a fence. When he takes anotion to have a fence, he wants it put up beforeSaturday night.

If the Kentuckian, like the Englishman, is fond offencing himself off, like the Frenchman, he loveslong, straight roads. You will not find elsewhere inAmerica such highways as the Kentuckian has constructedover his country—broad, smooth, level,white, glistening turnpikes of macadamized limestone.It is a luxury to drive, and also an expense,as one will discover before one has passed throughmany toll-gates. One could travel more cheaply on[30]the finest railway on the continent. What RichardGrant White thought it worth while to record as arare and interesting sight—a man on an Englishhighway breaking stones—is no uncommon sighthere. All limestone for these hundreds of miles ofroad, having been quarried here, there, anywhere,and carted and strewn along the road-side, is brokenby a hammer in the hand. By the highway theworkman sits—usually an Irishman—pecking awayat a long rugged pile as though he were good tolive for a thousand years. Somehow, in patience, healways gets to the other end of his hard row.

One cannot sojourn long without coming to conceivean interest in this limestone, and loving tomeet its rich warm hues on the landscape. It hasmade a deal of history: limestone blue-grass, limestonewater, limestone roads, limestone fences, limestonebridges and arches, limestone engineeringarchitecture, limestone water-mills, limestone spring-housesand homesteads—limestone Kentuckians!Outside of Scripture no people was ever so foundedon a rock. It might be well to note, likewise, thatthe soil of this region is what scientists call sedentary—calledso because it sits quietly on the rocks,not because the people sit quietly on it.

Undoubtedly the most picturesque monuments inthe blue-grass country are old stone water-mills andold stone homesteads—landmarks each for separatetrains of ideas that run to poetry and to history.[31]The latter, built by pioneers or descendants of pioneers,nearly a hundred years ago, stand gray withyears, but good for nameless years to come; greatlow chimneys, deep little windows, thick walls, mightyfireplaces; situated usually with keen discretion onan elevation near a spring, just as a Saxon forefatherwould have placed them centuries ago. Haplyone will see the water of this spring issuing stillfrom a recess in a hill-side, with an overhangingledge of rock—the entrance to this cavern beingwalled across and closed with a gate, thus making,according to ancient fashion, a simple natural spring-houseand dairy.

Something like a feeling of exasperation is apt tocome over one in turning to the typical modernhouses. Nowhere, certainly, in rural America, arethere, within the same area, more substantial, comfortablehomesteads. They are nothing if not spaciousand healthful, frame or brick, two stories, shingleroofs. But they lack characteristic physiognomy;they have no harmony with the landscape, nor witheach other, nor often with themselves. They arenot beautiful when new, and can never be beautifulwhen old; for the beauty of newness and the beautyof oldness alike depend on beauty of form and color,which here is lacking. One longs for the sight of arural Gothic cottage, which would harmonize so wellwith the order of the scenery, or for a light, elegantvilla that should overlook these light and elegant[32]undulations of a beautiful and varied landscape. Itmust be understood that there are notable exceptionsto these statements even in the outlying districtsof the blue-grass country, and that they donot apply to the environs of the towns, nor to thetowns themselves.

Nowhere does one see masses of merely beautifulthings in the country. The slumbering art of interiordecoration is usually spent upon the parlor.The grounds around the houses are not kept in thebest order. The typical rural Kentucky housewifedoes not seem to have any compelling, controllingsense of the beautiful. She invariably concedessomething to beauty, but not enough. You will finda show of flowers at the poorest houses, though butgeranium slips in miscellaneous tins and pottery.But you do not generally see around more prosperoushomes any such parterres or beds as there ismoney to spend on, and time to tend, and groundsto justify.

A like spirit is shown by the ordinary blue-grassfarmer. His management strikes you as not thepink of tidiness, not the model of systematic thrift.Exceptions exist—many exceptions—but the ruleholds good. One cannot travel here in summer orautumn without observing that weeds flourish wherethey harm and create ugliness; fences go unrepaired;gates may be found swinging on one hinge. Hemisuses his long-cultivated fields; he cuts down his[33]scant, precious trees. His energy is not tireless, hiswatchfulness not sleepless. Why should they be?Human life here is not massed and swarming. Theoccupation of the soil is not close and niggard. Thelandscape is not even compact, much less crowded.There is room for more, plenty for more to eat. Noman here, like the ancient Roman prætor, ever decidedhow often one might, without trespass, gatherthe acorns that fall from his neighbors' trees. Nowoman ever went through a blue-grass harvest fieldgleaning. Ruth's vocation is unknown. By nature[34]the Kentuckian is no rigid economist. By birth,education, tradition, and inherited tendencies he isnot a country clout, but a rural gentleman. Hisideal of life is neither vast wealth nor personal distinction,but solid comfort in material conditions,and the material conditions are easy: fertility of soil,annual excess of production over consumption, comparativethinness of population. So he does notbrace himself for the tense struggle of life as it goeson in centres of fierce territorial shoulder-pushing.He can afford to indulge his slackness of endeavor.He is neither an alert aggressive agriculturist, nor alandscape gardener, nor a purveyor of commoditiesto the green-grocer. If the world wants vegetables,let it raise them. He declines to work himself todeath for other people, though they pay him for it.His wife is a lady, not a domestic laborer; and it isher privilege, in household affairs, placidly to surroundherself with an abundance which the lifelongfemale economists of the North would regardwith conscientious indignation.

In truth, there is much evidence to show that thispark-like country, intersected by many beautiful railroads,turnpikes, and shaded picturesque lanes, willbecome less and less an agricultural district, moreand more a region of unequalled pasturage, andhence more park-like still. One great interest abideshere, of course—the manufacture of Bourbon whiskey.Another interest has only within the last few[35]years been developed—the cultivation of tobacco,for which it was formerly thought that the blue-grasssoils were not adapted. But as years go by, the stockinterests invite more capital, demand more attention,give more pleasure—in a word, strike the full chordof modern interest by furnishing an unparalleledmeans of speculative profit.

Forty years ago the most distinguished citizens ofthe State were engaged in writing essays and prizepapers on scientific agriculture. A regular trottingtrack was not to be found in the whole country.Nothing was thought of the breeding and trainingof horses with reference to development of greaterspeed. Pacing horses were fashionable; and twogreat rivals in this gait having been brought togetherfor a trial of speed, in lieu of a track, paced amighty race over a river-bottom flat. We havechanged all that. The gentlemen no longer writetheir essays. Beef won the spurs of knighthood. InKentucky the horse has already been styled the firstcitizen. The great agricultural fairs of the Statehave modified their exhibits with reference to himalone, and fifteen or twenty thousand people giveafternoon after afternoon to the contemplation of hisbeauty and his speed. His one rival is the thoroughbred,who goes on running faster and faster. Oneof the brief code of nine laws for the governmentof the young Kentucky commonwealth that werepassed in the first legislative assembly ever held[36]west of the Alleghanies dealt with the preservationof the breed of horses. Nothing was said of education.The Kentuckian loves the memory of ThomasJefferson, not forgetting that he once ran racehorses.These great interests, not overlooking thecattle interest, the manufacture of whiskey, and theraising of tobacco, will no doubt constitute the futuredetermining factors in the history of this country.It should not be forgotten, however, that the Northernand Eastern palate becomes kindly disposed atthe bare mention of the many thousands of turkeysthat annually fatten on these plains.

"In Kentucky," writes Professor Shaler, in hisrecent history, "we shall find nearly pure Englishblood. It is, moreover, the largest body of pureEnglish folk that has, speaking generally, been separatedfrom the mother country for two hundredyears." They, the blue-grass Kentuckians, are thedescendants of those hardy, high-spirited, pickedEnglishmen, largely of the squire and yeoman class,whose absorbing passion was not religious disputation,nor the intellectual purpose of founding aState, but the ownership of land and the pursuitsand pleasures of rural life, close to the rich soil, and[37]full of its strength and sunlight. They have to thisday, in a degree perhaps equalled by no others living,the race qualities of their English ancestry andthe tastes and habitudes of their forefathers. If oneknows the Saxon nature, and has been a close studentof Kentucky life and character, stripped bareof the accidental circumstances of local environment,he may amuse himself with laying the twoside by side and comparing the points of essentiallikeness. It is a question whether the Kentuckianis not more like his English ancestor than his NewEngland contemporary. This is an old country, asthings go in the West. The rock formation is veryold; the soil is old; the race qualities here are old.In the Sagas, in the Edda, a man must be over-brave."Let all who are not cowards follow me!"cried McGary, putting an end to prudent counselon the eve of the battle of the Blue Licks. TheKentuckian winced under the implication then, andhas done it in a thousand instances since. Over-bravery!The idea runs through the pages of Kentuckyhistory, drawing them back into the centuriesof his race. It is this quality of temper and conceptionof manhood that has operated to build up inthe mind of the world the figure of the typical Kentuckian.Hawthorne conversed with an old man inEngland who told him that the Kentuckians flayedTecumseh where he fell, and converted his skin intorazor-strops. Collins, the Kentucky Froissart, speaking[38]of Kentucky pioneers, relates of the father ofone of them that he knocked Washington downin a quarrel, and received an apology from theFather of his Country on the following day. I havementioned this typical Hotspur figure because Iknew it would come foremost into the mind of thereader whenever one began to speak with candorof Kentucky life and character. It was never atrue type: satire bit always into burlesque alonglines of coarseness and exaggeration. Much less isit true now, except in so far as it describes a kindof human being found the world over.

But I was saying that old race qualities are apparenthere, because this is a people of English bloodwith hereditary agricultural tastes, and because ithas remained to this day largely uncommingled withforeign strains. Here, for instance, is the old raceconservatism that expends itself reverentially on establishedways and familiar customs. The buildingof the first great turnpike in this country was opposedon the ground that it would shut up way-sidetaverns, throw wagons and teams out of employment,and destroy the market for chickens and oats.Prior to that, immigration was discouraged becauseit would make the already high prices of necessaryarticles so exorbitant that the permanent prosperityof the State would receive a fatal check. True,however, this opposition was not without a certainphilosophy; for in those days people went to some[39]distant lick for their salt, bought it warm from thekettle at seven or eight cents a pound, and packed ithome on horseback, so that a fourth dropped awayin bitter water. Coming back to the present, thehuge yellowish-red stage-coach rolls to-day over themarbled roads of the blue-grass country. Familiesmay be found living exactly where their pioneer ancestorseffected a heroic settlement—a landed aristocracy,if there be such in America. Family namescome down from generation to generation, just as aglance at the British peerage will show that theywere long ago being transmitted in kindred familiesover the sea. One great honored name will donearly as much in Kentucky as in England to keepa family in peculiar respect, after the reason for ithas ceased. Here is that old invincible race ideal ofpersonal liberty, and that old, unreckoning, truculent,animal rage at whatever infringes on it. TheKentuckians were among the very earliest to grantmanhood suffrage. Nowhere in this country are therights of property more inviolable, the violations ofthese more surely punished: neither counsel norjudge nor any power whatsoever can acquit a manwho has taken fourpence of his neighbor's goods.Here is the old land-loving, land-holding, home-staying,home-defending disposition. This is not thelunching, tourist race that, to Mr. Ruskin's horror,leaves its crumbs and chicken-bones on the glaciers.The simple rural key-note of life is still the sweetest.[40]Now, after the lapse of more than a century, themost populous town contains less than twentythousand white souls. Along with the love of landhas gone comparative content with the annual increaseof flock and field. No man among them hasever got immense wealth. Here is the old sense ofpersonal privacy and reserve which has for centuriesintrenched the Englishman in the heart of his estate,and forced him to regard with inexpugnablediscomfort his neighbor's boundaries. This wouldhave been a densely peopled region, the farms wouldhave been minutely subdivided, had sons asked andreceived permission to settle on parts of the ancestralestate. This filling in and too close personalcontact would have satisfied neither father norchild, so that the one has generally kept his acresintact, and the other, impelled by the same land-hungerthat brought his pioneer forefather hither,has gone hence into the younger West, where liebroader tracts and vaster spaces. Here is the oldidea, somewhat current still in England, that thehighest mark of the gentleman is not cultivation ofthe mind, not intellect, not knowledge, but elegantliving. Here is the old hereditary devotion to theidea of the State. Write the biographies of theKentuckians who have been engaged in national orin local politics, and you have largely the historyof the State of Kentucky. Write the lives of all itsscientists, artists, musicians, actors, poets, novelists,[41]and you find many weary mile-stones between thechapters.

Enter the blue-grass region from what point youchoose—and you may do this, so well traversed is itby railways—and you become sensitive to its influence.If you come from the North or the East, yousay: "This is not modern America. Here is somethinglocal and unique. For one thing, nothinggoes fast here." By-and-by you see a blue-grassrace-horse, and note an exception. But you do notalso except the rider or the driver. The speed isnot his. He is a mere bunch of mistletoe to thehorse. Detach him, and he is not worth timing.Human speed for the most part lies fallow. Everyman starts for the goal of life at his own natural[42]gait, and if he sees that it is too far off for him toreach it in a lifetime, he does not run the faster, buthas the goal moved nearer him. The Kentuckiansare not provincial. As Thoreau said, no people canlong remain provincial who have a propensity forpolitics, whittling, and rapid travelling. They arenot inaccessible to modern ideas, but the shock ofmodern ideas has not electrified them. They havewalled themselves around with old race instinctsand habitudes, and when the stream of tendencyrushes against this wall, it recoils upon itself insteadof sweeping away the barrier.

The typical Kentuckian regards himself an Americanof the Americans, and thinks as little of beinglike the English as he would of imitating the Jutes.In nothing is he more like his transatlantic ancestrythan in strong self-content. He sits on his farm asthough it were the pole of the heavens—a manlyman with a heart in him. Usually of the blondtype, robust, well formed, with clear, fair complexion,that grows ruddier with age and stomachic development,full neck, and an open, kind, untroubled countenance.He is frank, but not familiar; talkative, butnot garrulous; full of the genial humor of local hitsand allusions, but without a subtle nimbleness ofwit; indulgent towards purely masculine vices, butintolerant of petty crimes; no reader of books normaster in religious debate, faith coming to him asnaturally as his appetite, and growing with what it[43]feeds upon; loving roast pig, but not caring particularlyfor Lamb's eulogy; loving his grass like aGreek, not because it is beautiful, but because it isfresh and green; a peaceful man with strong passions,and so to be heartily loved and respected orheartily hated and respected, but never despised ortrifled with. An occasional barbecue in the woods,where the saddles of South Down mutton are roastedon spits over the coals of the mighty trench, andthe steaming kettles of burgoo lend their savor tothe nose of the hungry political orator, so that he becomesall the more impetuous in his invectives; thegreat agricultural fairs; the race-courses; the monthlycounty court day, when he meets his neighborson the public square of the nearest town; the quietSunday mornings, when he meets them again forrather more clandestine talks at the front door ofthe neighborhood church—these and his own firesideare his characteristic and ample pleasures. Youwill never be under his roof without being touchedby the mellowest of all the virtues of his race—simple,unsparing human kindness and hospitality.

The women of Kentucky have long had reputationfor beauty. An average type is a refinementon the English blonde—greater delicacy of form,feature, and color. A beautiful Kentucky woman isapt to be exceedingly beautiful. Her voice is lowand soft; her hands and feet delicately formed; herskin pure and beautiful in tint and shading; her[44]eyes blue or brown, and hair nut brown or goldenbrown; to all which is added a certain unapproachablerefinement. It must not for a moment be supposed,however, that there are not many genuinelyugly women in Kentucky.[45]

UNCLE TOM AT HOME

On the outskirts of the towns of centralKentucky, a stranger, searching for thepicturesque in architecture and in life,would find his attention arrested by certainmasses of low frame and brick structures, and bythe multitudes of strange human beings that inhabitthem. A single town may have on its edges severalof these settlements, which are themselves called"towns," and bear separate names either descriptiveof some topographical peculiarity or taken from theoriginal owners of the lots. It is in these that agreat part of the negro population of Kentucky haspacked itself since the war. Here live the slaves ofthe past with their descendants; old family servantsfrom the once populous country-places; old wagon-driversfrom the deep-rutted lanes; old wood-choppersfrom the slaughtered blue-grass forests; oldharvesters and ploughmen from the long since abandonedfields; old cooks from the savory, wastefulkitchens; old nurses from the softly rocked andsoftly sung-to cradles. Here, too, are the homes ofthe younger generation, of the laundresses and thebarbers, teachers and ministers of the gospel, coachmen[48]and porters, restaurant-keepers and vagabonds,hands from the hemp factories, and workmen on theoutlying farms.

You step easily from the verge of the white populationto the confines of the black. But it is a greatdistance—like the crossing of a vast continent betweenthe habitats of alien races. The air seems allat once to tan the cheek. Out of the cold, bluerecesses of the midsummer sky the sun burns witha fierceness of heat that warps the shingles of thepointed roofs and flares with blinding brilliancyagainst some whitewashed wall. Perhaps in all thestreet no little cooling stretch of shade. The unpavedsidewalks and the roadway between are butindistinguishable parts of a common thoroughfare,along which every upspringing green thing is quicklytrodden to death beneath the ubiquitous play andpassing of many feet. Here and there, from someshielded nook or other coign of vantage, a singleplumy branch of dog-fennel may be seen spreadingits small firmament of white and golden stars closeto the ground; or between its pale green stalks thefaint lavender of the nightshade will take the eye asthe sole emblem of the flowering world.

A negro town! Looking out the doors and windowsof the cabins, lounging in the door-ways, leaningover the low frame fences, gathering into quicklyforming, quickly dissolving groups in the dustystreets, they swarm. They are here from milk-white[49]through all deepening shades to glossy blackness;octoroons, quadroons, mulattoes—some with largeliquid black eyes, refined features, delicate forms;working, gossiping, higgling over prices around avegetable cart, discussing last night's church festival,to-day's funeral, or next week's railway excursion,sleeping, planning how to get work and how to escapeit. From some unseen old figure in flamboyantturban, bending over the wash-tub in the rear of acabin, comes a crooned song of indescribable pathos;behind a half-closed front shutter, a Moorish-huedamosoro in gay linen thrums his banjo in a measureof ecstatic gayety preluding the more passionate melodiesof the coming night. Here a fight; there thesound of the fiddle and the rhythmic patting of hands.Tatters and silks flaunt themselves side by side. Dirtand cleanliness lie down together. Indolence goeshand in hand with thrift. Superstition dogs the slowfootsteps of reason. Passion and self-control eyeeach other across the narrow way. If there is anywhereresolute virtue, round it is a weltered muck oflow and sensual desire. One sees the surviving typesof old negro life here crowded together with and contrastedwith the new phases of "colored" life—seesthe transitional stage of a race, part of whom wereborn slaves and are now freemen, part of whom havebeen born freemen but remain so much like slaves.

It cannot fail to happen, as you walk along, thatyou will come upon some cabin set back in a small[50]yard and half hidden, front and side, by an almosttropical jungle of vines and multiform foliage: patchesof great sunflowers, never more leonine in tawnymagnificence and sun-loving repose; festoons ofwhite and purple morning-glories over the windowsand up to the low eaves; around the porch andabove the door-way, a trellis of gourd-vines swingingtheir long-necked, grotesque yellow fruit; about theentrance flaming hollyhocks and other brilliant bitsof bloom, marigolds and petunias—evidences of thewarm, native taste that still distinguishes the negroafter some centuries of contact with the cold, chastenedideals of the Anglo-Saxon.

In the door-way of such a cabin, sheltered fromthe afternoon sun by his dense jungle of vines, butwith a few rays of light glinting through the flutteringleaves across his seamed black face and whitewoolly head, the muscles of his once powerful armsshrunken, the gnarled hands folded idly in his lap—hisoccupation gone—you will haply see some old-timeslave of the class of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom.For it is true that scattered here and there throughoutthe negro towns of Kentucky are representativesof the same class that furnished her with her hero;true, also, that they were never sold by their Kentuckymasters to the plantations of the South, butremained unsold down to the last days of slavery.

When the war scattered the negroes of Kentuckyblindly, tumultuously, hither and thither, many[51]of them gathered the members of their familiesabout them and moved from the country into these"towns;" and here the few survivors live, ready totestify of their relations with their former mastersand mistresses, and indirectly serving to point agreat moral: that, however justly Mrs. Stowe mayhave chosen one of their number as best fitted toshow the fairest aspects of domestic slavery in theUnited States, she departed from the common truthof history, as it respected their lot in life, when shecondemned her Uncle Tom to his tragical fate. Forit was not thecharacter of Uncle Tom that she greatlyidealized, as has been so often asserted; it wasthe category of events that were made to befall him.

As citizens of the American Republic, these oldnegroes—now known as "colored gentlemen," surroundedby "colored ladies and gentlemen"—havenot done a great deal. The bud of liberty was ingraftedtoo late on the ancient slave-stock to bearmuch fruit. But they are interesting, as contemporariesof a type of Kentucky negro whose virtuesand whose sorrows, dramatically embodied in literature,have become a by-word throughout the civilizedworld. And now that the war-cloud is lifting fromover the landscape of the past, so that it lies stillclear to the eyes of those who were once the dwellersamid its scenes, it is perhaps a good time to scan itand note some of its great moral landmarks beforeit grows remoter and is finally forgotten.[52]

These three types—Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom, andthe Shelbys, his master and mistress—were the outgrowthof natural and historic conditions peculiarto Kentucky. "Perhaps," wrote Mrs. Stowe in hernovel, "the mildest form of the system of slavery isto be seen in the State of Kentucky. The generalprevalence of agricultural pursuits of a quiet andgradual nature, not requiring those periodic seasonsof hurry and pressure that are called for in the businessof more southern districts, makes the task of thenegro a more healthful and reasonable one; whilethe master, content with a more gradual style ofacquisition, had not those temptations to hard-heartednesswhich always overcome frail human nature,when the prospect of sudden and rapid gain isweighed in the balance with no heavier counterpoisethan the interests of the helpless and unprotected."These words contain many truths.

For it must not be forgotten, first of all, that thecondition of the slave in Kentucky was measurablydetermined by certain physical laws which lay beyondthe control of the most inhuman master. Considerthe nature of the country—elevated, rolling,without miasmatic districts or fatal swamps; the[53]soil in the main slave-holding portions of the Stateeasily tilled, abundantly yielding; the climate temperateand invigorating. Consider the system ofagriculture—not that of vast plantations, but ofsmall farms, part of which regularly consisted ofwoodland and meadow that required little attention.Consider the further limitations to this system imposedby the range of the great Kentucky staples—itbeing in the nature of corn, wheat, hemp, andtobacco, not to yield profits sufficient to justify theemployment of an immense predial force, nor to requireseasons of forced and exhausting labor. It isevident that under such conditions slavery was notstamped with those sadder features which it worebeneath a devastating sun, amid unhealthy or sterileregions of country, and through the herding togetherof hundreds of slaves who had the outward but notthe inward discipline of an army. True, one recallshere the often quoted words of Jefferson on the raisingof tobacco—words nearly as often misappliedas quoted; for he was considering the condition ofslaves who were unmercifully worked on exhaustedlands by a certain proletarian type of master, whodid not feed and clothe them. Only under suchcircumstances could the culture of this plant be describedas "productive of infinite wretchedness," andthose engaged in it as "in a continual state of exertionbeyond the powers of nature to support." Itwas by reason of these physical facts that slavery in[54]Kentucky assumed the phase which is to be distinguishedas domestic; and it was this mode thathad prevailed at the North and made emancipationeasy.

Furthermore, in all history the condition of anenslaved race under the enslaving one has beenpartly determined by the degree of moral justificationwith which the latter has regarded the subjectof human bondage; and the life of the Kentuckynegro, say in the days of Uncle Tom, was furthermodified by the body of laws which had crystallizedas the sentiment of the people, slave-holders themselves.But even these laws were only a partialexponent of what that sentiment was; for some ofthe severest were practically a dead letter, and theclemency of the negro's treatment by the prevailingtype of master made amends for the hard provisionsof others.

It would be a difficult thing to write the historyof slavery in Kentucky. It is impossible to write asingle page of it here. But it may be said that theconscience of the great body of the people was alwayssensitive touching the rightfulness of the institution.At the very outset it seems to have beenrecognized simply for the reason that the early settlerswere emigrants from slave-holding States andbrought their negroes with them. The commonwealthbegan its legislation on the subject in theface of an opposing sentiment. By early statute[55]restriction was placed on the importation of slaves,and from the first they began to be emancipated.Throughout the seventy-five years of pro-slaveryState-life, the general conscience was always troubled.

The churches took up the matter. Great preachers,whose names were influential beyond the State,denounced the system from the pulpit, pleaded forthe humane and Christian treatment of slaves, advocatedgradual emancipation. One religious bodyafter another proclaimed the moral evil of it, andurged that the young be taught and prepared assoon as possible for freedom. Antislavery publicationsand addresses, together with the bold words ofgreat political leaders, acted as a further leaven inthe mind of the slave-holding class. As evidence ofthis, when the new constitution of the State was tobe adopted, about 1850, thirty thousand votes werecast in favor of an open clause in it, whereby gradualemancipation should become a law as soon asthe majority of the citizens should deem it expedientfor the peace of society; and these votes representedthe richest, most intelligent slave-holders inthe State.

In general the laws were perhaps the mildest.Some it is vital to the subject not to pass over. Ifslaves were inhumanly treated by their owner or notsupplied with proper food and clothing, they couldbe taken from him and sold to a better master.This law was not inoperative. I have in mind the[56]instance of a family who lost their negroes in thisway, were socially disgraced, and left their neighborhood.If the owner of a slave had bought him oncondition of not selling him out of the county, orinto the Southern States, or so as not to separatehim from his family, he could be sued for violationof contract. This law shows the opposition of thebetter class of Kentucky masters to the slave-trade,and their peculiar regard for the family ties of theirnegroes. In the earliest Kentucky newspapers willbe found advertisements of the sales of negroes, oncondition that they would be bought and kept withinthe county or the State. It was within chanceryjurisdiction to prevent the separation of families.The case may be mentioned of a master who wastried by his Church for unnecessarily separating ahusband from his wife. Sometimes slaves who hadbeen liberated and had gone to Canada voluntarilyreturned into service under their former masters.Lest these should be overreached, they were to betaken aside and examined by the court to see thatthey understood the consequences of their own action,and were free from improper constraint. Onthe other hand, if a slave had a right to his freedom,he could file a bill in chancery and enforce hismaster's assent thereto.

But a clear distinction must be made between themild view entertained by the Kentucky slave-holdersregarding the system itself and their dislike of the[57]agitators of forcible and immediate emancipation.A community of masters, themselves humane totheir negroes and probably intending to liberatethem in the end, would yet combine into a mob toput down individual or organized antislavery efforts,because they resented what they regarded an interferenceof the abolitionist with their own affairs, andbelieved his measures inexpedient for the peace ofsociety. Therefore, the history of the antislaverymovement in Kentucky, at times so turbulent, mustnot be used to show the sentiment of the people regardingslavery itself.

III

From these general considerations it is possibleto enter more closely upon a study of the domesticlife and relations of Uncle Tom and the Shelbys.

"Whoever visits some estates there," wrote Mrs.Stowe, "and witnesses the good-humored indulgenceof some masters and mistresses and the affectionateloyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dreamof the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution."Along with these words, taken fromUncleTom's Cabin, I should like to quote an extractfrom a letter written me by Mrs. Stowe under dateof April 30, 1886:[58]

The typical boy on a Kentucky farm was tenderlyassociated from infancy with the negroes of thehousehold and the fields. His old black "Mammy"became almost his first mother, and was but slowlycrowded out of his conscience and his heart by thegrowing image of the true one. She had perhapsnursed him at her bosom when he was not longenough to stretch across it, sung over his cradle atnoon and at midnight, taken him out upon the velvetygrass beneath the shade of the elm-trees towatch his first manly resolution of standing alone inthe world and walking the vast distance of someinches. Often, in boyish years, when flying fromthe house with a loud appeal from the incomprehensiblecode of Anglo-Saxon punishment for smallmisdemeanors, he had run to those black arms andcried himself to sleep in the lap of African sympathy.As he grew older, alas! his first love grewfaithless; and while "Mammy" was good enough in[59][60][61]her way and sphere, his wandering affections settledhumbly at the feet of another great functionary ofthe household—the cook in the kitchen. To himher keys were as the keys to the kingdom of heaven,for his immortal soul was his immortal appetite.When he stood by the biscuit bench while she,pausing amid the varied industries that went intothe preparation of an old-time Kentucky supper,made him marvellous geese of dough, with farinaceousfeathers and genuine coffee-grains for eyes,there was to him no other artist in the world whopossessed the secret of so commingling the usefulwith the beautiful.

The little half-naked imps, too, playing in the dirtlike glossy blackbirds taking a bath of dust, werehis sweetest, because perhaps his forbidden, companions.With them he went clandestinely to the fatalduck-pond in the stable lot, to learn the art of swimmingon a walnut rail. With them he raced up anddown the lane on blooded alder-stalk horses, afterwardsleading the exhausted coursers into stablesof green bushes and haltering them high with acotton string. It was one of these hatless childrenof original Guinea that had crept up to himas he lay asleep in the summer grass and toldhim where the best hidden of all nests was to befound in a far fence corner—that of the high-tempered,scolding guinea-hen. To them he showedhis first Barlow knife; for them he blew his first[62]home-made whistle. He is their petty tyrant to-day;to-morrow he will be their repentant friend, dividingwith them his marbles and proposing a game of hopscotch.Upon his dialect, his disposition, his wholecharacter, is laid the ineffaceable impress of theirs,so that they pass into the final reckoning-up of hislife here and in the world to come.

But Uncle Tom!—the negro overseer of the place—thegreatest of all the negroes—greater even thanthe cook, when one is not hungry. How often hashe straddled Uncle Tom's neck, or ridden behindhim afield on a barebacked horse to the jinglingmusic of the trace-chains! It is Uncle Tom whoplaits his hempen whip and ties the cracker in aknot that will stay. It is Uncle Tom who bringshim his first young squirrel to tame, the teeth ofwhich are soon to be planted in his right forefinger.Many a time he slips out of the house to take hisdinner or supper in the cabin with Uncle Tom;and during long winter evenings he loves to sit beforethose great roaring cabin fireplaces that throwtheir red and yellow lights over the half circle ofblack faces and on the mysteries of broom-making,chair-bottoming, and the cobbling of shoes. Likethe child who listens to "Uncle Remus," he, too,hears songs and stories, and creeps back to thehouse with a wondering look in his eyes and avague hush of spirit.

Then come school-days and vacations during[63]which, as Mrs. Stowe says, he may teach UncleTom to make his letters on a slate or expound tohim the Scriptures. Then, too, come early adventureswith the gun, and 'coon hunts and 'possumhunts with the negroes under the round moon, withthe long-eared, deep-voiced hounds—to him deliciousand ever-memorable nights! The crisp air, throughwhich the breath rises like white incense, the thickautumn leaves, begemmed with frost, rustling underfoot;the shadows of the mighty trees; the strainedear; the heart leaping with excitement; the negroesand dogs mingling their wild delight in music thatwakes the echoes of distant hill-sides. Away! Away!mile after mile, hour after hour, to where the purpleand golden persimmons hang low from the boughs,or where from topmost limbs the wild grape dropsits countless clusters in a black cascade a sheer twohundred feet.

Now he is a boy no longer, but has his first love-affair,which sends a thrill through all those susceptiblecabins; has his courtship, which gives rise tomany a wink and innuendo; and brings home hisbride, whose coming converts every youngster intoa living rolling ball on the ground, and opens thefeasts and festivities of universal joy.

Then some day "ole Marster" dies, and the negroes,one by one, young and old, file into the darkenedparlor to take a last look at his quiet face. Hehad his furious temper, "ole Marster" had, and his[64]sins—which God forgive! To-day he will be buried,and to-morrow "young Marster" will inherit hissaddle-horse and ride out into the fields.

Thus he has come into possession of his negroes.Among them are a few whose working days areover. These are to be kindly cared for, decentlyburied. Next are the active laborers, and, last, thegeneration of children. He knows them all byname, capacity, and disposition; is bound to themby life-long associations; hears their communicationsand complaints. When he goes to town, he ischarged with commissions, makes purchases withtheir own money. Continuing the course of his father,he sets about making them capable, contentedworkmen. There shall be special training for specialaptitude. One shall be made a blacksmith, asecond a carpenter, a third a cobbler of shoes. Inall the general industries of the farm, education shallnot be lacking. It is claimed that a Kentucky negroinvented the hemp-brake. As a result of thiseffective management, the Southern planter, lookingnorthward, will pay him a handsome premium for hisblue-grass slave. He will have no white overseer.He does not like the type of man. Besides, one isnot needed. Uncle Tom served his father in thiscapacity; let him be.

Among his negroes he finds a bad one. Whatshall he do with him? Keep him? Keeping himmakes him worse, and moreover he corrupts the[65][66][67]others. Set him free? That is to put a rewardupon evil. Sell him to his neighbors? They donot want him. If they did, he would not sell him tothem. He sells him into the South. This is astatement, not an apology. Here, for a moment,one touches the terrible subject of the internal slave-trade.Negroes were sold from Kentucky into theSouthern market because, as has just been said, theywere bad, or by reason of the law of partible inheritance,or, as was the case with Mrs. Stowe's UncleTom, under constraint of debt. Of course, in manycases, they were sold wantonly and cruelly; butthese, however many, were not enough to make theinternal slave-trade more than an incidental andsubordinate feature of the system. The belief thatnegroes in Kentucky were regularly bred and rearedfor the Southern market is a mistaken one. Mrs.Stowe herself fell into the error of basing an argumentfor the prevalence of the slave-trade in thisState upon the notion of exhausted lands, as the followingpassage fromThe Key to Uncle Tom's Cabinshows:

Those words were written some thirty-five yearsago and refer to a time long prior to that date. Now,the fact is that at least one-half the soil of Kentuckyhas never been under cultivation, and could not,[68]therefore, have been exhausted by slave-labor. Atleast a half of the remainder, though cultivated eversince, is still not seriously exhausted; and of thesmall portion still left a large share was always naturallypoor, so that for this reason slave-labor wasbut little employed on it. The great slave-holdingregion of the State was the fertile region which hasnever been impoverished. To return from this digression,it may be well that the typical Kentuckyfarmer does not find among his negroes a bad one;for in consequence of the early non-importation ofslaves for barter or sale, and through long associationwith the household, they have been greatly elevatedand humanized. If he must sell a good one,he will seek a buyer among his neighbors. He willeven ask the negro to name his choice of a masterand try to consummate his wish. No purchasernear by, he will mount his saddle-horse and look forone in the adjoining county. In this way the negroesof different estates and neighborhoods werecommonly connected by kinship and intermarriage.How unjust to say that such a master did not feelaffection for his slaves, anxiety for their happiness,sympathy with the evils inseparable from their condition.Let me cite the case of a Kentucky masterwho had failed. He could pay his debts by sacrificinghis negroes or his farm, one or the other. Toavoid separating the former, probably sending someof them South, he kept them in a body and sold his[69]farm. Any one who knows the Kentuckian's loveof land and home will know what this means. Afew years, and the war left him without anything.Another case is more interesting still. A masterhaving failed, actually hurried his negroes off toCanada. Tried for defrauding his creditors, andthat by slave-holding jurors, he was acquitted. Theplea of his counsel, among other arguments, was themaster's unwillingness to see his old and faithfulservitors scattered and suffering. After emancipationold farm hands sometimes refused to budgefrom their cabins. Their former masters paid themfor their services as long as they could work, andsupported them when helpless. I have in mind aninstance where a man, having left Kentucky, sentback hundreds of dollars to an aged, needy domestic,though himself far from rich; and another casewhere a man still contributes annually to the maintenanceof those who ceased to work for him thequarter of a century ago.

The good in human nature is irrepressible. Slavery,evil as it was, when looked at from the remotenessof human history as it is to be, will be adjudgedan institution that gave development to certain nobletypes of character. Along with other social forcespeculiar to the age, it produced in Kentucky a kindof farmer, the like of which will never appear again.He had the aristocratic virtues: highest notions ofpersonal liberty and personal honor, a fine especial[70]scorn of anything that was mean, little, cowardly.As an agriculturist he was not driving or mercilessor grasping; the rapid amassing of wealth was notamong his passions, the contention of splendid livingnot among his thorns. To a certain carelessnessof riches he added a certain profuseness of expenditure;and indulgent towards his own pleasures,towards others, his equals or dependents, he borehimself with a spirit of kindness and magnanimity.Intolerant of tyranny, he was no tyrant. To say ofsuch a man, as Jefferson said of every slave-holder,that he lived in perpetual exercise of the most boisterouspassions and unremitting despotism, and inthe exaction of the most degrading submission, wasto pronounce judgment hasty and unfair. Ratherdid Mrs. Stowe, while not blind to his faults, discernhis virtues when she made him, embarrassed bydebt, exclaim: "If anybody had said to me that Ishould sell Tom down South to one of those rascallytraders, I should have said, 'Is thy servant a dogthat he should do this thing?'"

But there was another person who, more than themaster, sustained close relationship to the negro lifeof the household—the mistress. In the person of[71]Mrs. Shelby, Mrs. Stowe described some of the besttraits of a Kentucky woman of the time; but perhapsonly a Southern woman herself could do fulljustice to a character which many duties and manyburdens endued with extraordinary strength and variedefficiency.

She was mistress of distinct realms—the houseand the cabins—and the guardian of the bonds betweenthe two, which were always troublesome, oftendelicate, sometimes distressing. In those cabinswere nearly always some poor creatures needingsympathy and watch-care: the superannuated mothershelpless with babes, babes helpless without mothers,the sick, perhaps the idiotic. Apparel must behad for all. Standing in her door-way and pointingto the meadow, she must be able to say in the wordsof a housewife of the period, "There are the sheep;now get your clothes." Some must be taught tokeep the spindle and the loom going; others trainedfor dairy, laundry, kitchen, dining-room; others yettaught fine needle-work. Upon her fell the labor ofprivate instruction and moral exhortation, for theteaching of negroes was not forbidden in Kentucky.

She must remind them that their marriage vowsare holy and binding; must interpose between mothersand their cruel punishment of their own offspring.Hardest of all, she must herself punish forlying, theft, immorality. Her own children mustbe guarded against temptation and corrupting influences.[72]In her life no cessation of this care yearin and year out. Beneath every other trouble thesecret conviction that she has no right to enslavethese creatures, and that, however improved theircondition, their life is one of great and necessaryevils. Mrs. Stowe well makes her say: "I havetried—tried most faithfully as a Christian womanshould—to do my duty towards these poor, simple,dependent creatures. I have cared for them, instructedthem, watched over them, and known alltheir little cares and joys for years.... I have taughtthem the duties of the family, of parent and child,and husband and wife.... I thought, by kindnessand care and instruction, I could make the conditionof mine better than freedom." Sorely overburdenedand heroic mould of woman! Fulfillingeach day a round of intricate duties, rising at anyhour of the night to give medicine to the sick, liableat any time, in addition to the cares of her greathousehold, to see an entire family of acquaintancesarriving unannounced, with trunks and servants oftheir own, for a visit protracted in accordance withthe large hospitalities of the time. What wonderif, from sheer inability to do all things herself, shetrains her negroes to different posts of honor, sothat the black cook finally expels her from her ownkitchen and rules over that realm as an autocrat ofunquestioned prerogatives?

Mistresses of this kind had material reward in the[73]trusty adherence of their servants during the war.Their relations throughout this period—so well calculatedto try the loyalty of the African nature—wouldof themselves make up a volume of the mosttouching incidents. Even to-day one will find inmany Kentucky households survivals of the oldorder—find "Aunt Chloe" ruling as a despot in thekitchen, and making her will the pivotal point of thewhole domestic system. I have spent nights with ayoung Kentuckian, self-willed and high-spirited,whose occasional refusals to rise for a half-past fiveo'clock breakfast always brought the cook from thekitchen up to his bedroom, where she delivered hercommands in a voice worthy of Catherine the Great."We shall have to get up," he would say, "or there'llbe a row!" One may yet see old negresses settingout for an annual or a semi-annual visit to their formermistresses, and bearing some offering—a basketof fruits or flowers. I should like to mention thecase of one who died after the war and left her twochildren to her mistress, to be reared and educated.The troublesome, expensive charge was faithfullyexecuted.

Here, in the hard realities of daily life, here iswhere the crushing burden of slavery fell—on thewomen of the South. History has yet to do justiceto the noblest type of them, whether in Kentuckyor elsewhere. In view of what they accomplished,despite the difficulties in their way, there is nothing[74]they have found harder to forgive in the women ofthe North than the failure to sympathize with themin the struggles and sorrows of their lot, and to realizethatthey were the real practical philanthropistsof the negro race.

But as is the master, so is the slave, and it isthrough the characters of the Shelbys that we mustapproach that of Uncle Tom. For of all races, theAfrican—superstitious, indolent, singing, dancing,impressionable creature—depends upon others forenlightenment, training, and happiness. If, therefore,you find him so intelligent that he may be sent onimportant business, so honest that he may be trustedwith money, house, and home, so loyal that he willnot seize opportunity to become free; if you findhim endowed with the manly virtues of dignity andself-respect united to the Christian virtues of humility,long-suffering, and forgiveness, then do not, inmarvelling at him on these accounts, quite forget hismaster and his mistress—they made him what hewas. And it is something to be said on their behalf,that in their household was developed a type ofslave that could be set upon a sublime moral pinnacleto attract the admiration of the world.[75]

Attention is fixed on Uncle Tom first as head-servantof the farm. In a small work on slavery inKentucky by George Harris, it is stated that masterschose the cruelest of their negroes for this office.It is not true, exceptions allowed for. The workwould not be worth mentioning, had not so manypeople at the North believed it. The amusing thingis, they believed Mrs. Stowe also. But if Mrs. Stowe'saccount of slavery in Kentucky is true, Harris's isnot.

It is true that Uncle Tom inspired the othernegroes with some degree of fear. He was censorof morals, and reported derelictions of the lazy, thedestructive, and the thievish. For instance, an UncleTom on one occasion told his master of the stealingof a keg of lard, naming the thief and the hiding-place."Say not a word about it," replied his master.The next day he rode out into the field where theculprit was ploughing, and, getting down, walkedalong beside him. "What's the matter, William?" heasked, after a while; "you can't look me in the faceas usual." William burst into tears, and confessedeverything. "Come to-night, and I will arrange sothat you can put the lard back and nobody will everknow you took it." The only punishment was alittle moral teaching; but the Uncle Tom in thecase, though he kept his secret, looked for some daysas though the dignity of his office had not beensuitably upheld by his master.[76]

It was Uncle Tom's duty to get the others off towork in the morning. In the fields he did not drivethe work, but led it—being a master-workman—ledthe cradles and the reaping-hooks, the hemp-breakingand the corn-shucking. The spirit of happymusic went with the workers. They were not goadedthrough their daily tasks by the spur of pitilesshusbandry. Nothing was more common than theirvoluntary contests of skill and power. My recollectionreaches only to the last two or three years ofslavery; but I remember the excitement with whichI witnessed some of these hard-fought battles of thenegroes. Rival hemp-breakers of the neighborhood,meeting in the same field, would slip out long beforebreakfast and sometimes never stop for dinner. Soit was with cradling, corn-shucking, or corn-cutting—inall work where rivalries were possible. No doubtthere were other motives. So much work was aday's task; for more there was extra pay. A capitalhand, by often performing double or treble the requiredamount, would clear a neat profit in a season.The days of severest labor fell naturally in harvest-time.But then intervals of rest in the shade werecommonly given; and milk, coffee, or, when the prejudiceof the master did not prevent (which was notoften), whiskey was distributed between meal-times.As a rule they worked without hurry. De Tocquevillegave unintentional testimony to characteristicslavery in Kentucky when he described the negroes[77]as "loitering" in the fields. On one occasion thehands dropped work to run after a rabbit the dogshad started. A passer-by indignantly reported thefact to the master. "Sir," said the old gentleman,with a hot face, "I'd have whipped the last d——nrascal of 'em if theyhadn't run 'im!"

The negroes made money off their truck-patches,in which they raised melons, broom-corn, vegetables.When Charles Sumner was in Kentucky, he sawwith almost incredulous eyes the comfortable cabinswith their flowers and poultry, the fruitful truck-patches,and a genuine Uncle Tom—"a black gentlemanwith his own watch!" Well enough doesMrs. Stowe put these words into her hero's mouth,when he hears he is to be sold: "I'm feared thingswill be kinder goin' to rack when I'm gone. Mas'rcan't be 'spected to be a-pryin' round everywhere asI've done, a-keepin' up all the ends. The boys meanswell, but they's powerful car'less."[78]

More interesting is Uncle Tom's character as apreacher. Contemporary with him in Kentucky wasa class of men among his people who exhorted, heldprayer-meetings in the cabins and baptizings in thewoods, performed marriage ceremonies, and enjoyedgreat freedom of movement. There was one in nearlyevery neighborhood, and together they wroughteffectively in the moral development of their race.I have nothing to say here touching the vast andsublime conception which Mrs. Stowe formed of"Uncle Tom's" spiritual nature. But no idealizedmanifestation of it is better than this simple occurrence:One of these negro preachers was allowed byhis master to fill a distant appointment. Belatedonce, and returning home after the hour forbiddenfor slaves to be abroad, he was caught by the patroland cruelly whipped. As the blows fell, his onlywords were: "Jesus Christ suffered for righteousness'sake; so kin I." Another of them was recommendedfor deacon's orders and actually ordained.When liberty came, he refused to be free, and continuedto work in his master's family till his death.With considerable knowledge of the Bible and afluent tongue, he would nevertheless sometimesgrow confused while preaching and lose his train ofthought. At these embarrassing junctures it washis wont suddenly to call out at the top of his voice,"Saul! Saul! why persecutest thou me?" The effectupon his hearers was electrifying; and as none but a[79]very highly favored being could be thought worthy ofenjoying this persecution, he thus converted his lossof mind into spiritual reputation. A third, namedPeter Cotton, united the vocations of exhorter andwood-chopper. He united them literally, for onemoment Peter might be seen standing on his logchopping away, and the next kneeling down besideit praying. He got his mistress to make him a longjeans coat and on the ample tails of it to embroider,by his direction, sundry texts of Scripture, such as:"Come unto me, all ye that are heavy laden!" Thusliterally clothed with righteousness, Peter went fromcabin to cabin preaching the Word. Well for him ifthat other Peter could have seen him.

These men sometimes made a pathetic additionto their marriage ceremonies: "Until death orourhigher powers do you separate!"

Another typical contemporary of Uncle Tom'swas the negro fiddler. It should be rememberedthat before he hears he is to be sold South, UncleTom is pictured as a light-hearted creature, caperingand dancing in his cabin. There was no lack ofmusic in those cabins. The banjo was played, butmore commonly the fiddle. A home-made varietyof the former consisted of a crook-necked, hard-shellgourd and a piece of sheepskin. There were sometimesother instruments—the flageolet and the triangle.I have heard of a kettle-drum's being madeof a copper still. A Kentucky negro carried through[80]the war as a tambourine the skull of a mule, the rattlingteeth being secured in the jawbones. Ofcourse bones were everywhere used. Negro musicon one or more instruments was in the highestvogue at the house of the master. The young Kentuckiansoften used it on serenading bravuras. Theold fiddler, most of all, was held in reverent esteemand met with the gracious treatment of the minstrelin feudal halls. At parties and weddings, at picnicsin the summer woods, he was the soul of melody;and with an eye to the high demands upon his art,he widened his range of selections and perfectedaccording to native standards his inimitable technique.The deep, tender, pure feeling in the song"Old Kentucky Home" is a true historic interpretation.

It is wide of the mark to suppose that on such afarm as that of the Shelbys, the negroes were in aperpetual frenzy of discontent or felt any burningdesire for freedom. It is difficult to reach a truegeneral conclusion on this delicate subject. But itmust go for something that even the Kentuckyabolitionists of those days will tell you that well-treatednegroes cared not a snap for liberty. Negroesthemselves, and very intelligent ones, will giveyou to-day the same assurance. It is an awkwarddiscovery to make, that some of them still cherishresentment towards agitators who came secretlyamong them, fomented discontent, and led them[81][82][83]away from homes to which they afterwards returned.And I want to state here, for no other reason thanthat of making an historic contribution to the studyof the human mind and passions, that a man's viewsof slavery in those days did not determine his treatmentof his own slaves. The only case of mutinyand stampede that I have been able to discover ina certain part of Kentucky, took place among thenegroes of a man who was known as an outspokenemancipationist. He pleaded for the freedom of thenegro, but in the mean time worked him at homewith the chain round his neck and the ball restingon his plough.

Christmas was, of course, the time of holiday merrymaking,and the "Ketchin' marster an' mistissChristmus gif'" was a great feature. One morningan aged couple presented themselves.

The only method of celebrating the boon was themoving into a cabin on the neighboring farm oftheir mistress's aunt and being freely supportedthere as they had been freely supported at home.

Mrs. Stowe has said, "There is nothing picturesque[84]or beautiful in the family attachment of oldservants, which is not to be found in countries wherethese servants are legally free." On the contrary, avolume of incidents might readily be gathered, thepicturesqueness and beauty of which are due whollyto the fact that the negroes were not free, but slaves.Indeed, many could never have happened at all butin this relationship. I cite the case of an old negrowho was buying his freedom from his master, whocontinued to make payments during the war, andmade the final one at the time of General KirbySmith's invasion of Kentucky. After he had paidhim the uttermost farthing, he told him that if heshould ever be a slave again, he wanted him for hismaster. Take the case of an old negress who hadbeen allowed to accumulate considerable property.At her death she willed it to her young masterinstead of to her sons, as she would have been allowedto do. But the war! what is to be said of thepart the negro took in that? Is there in the dramaof humanity a figure more picturesque or more patheticthan the figure of the African slave, as hefollowed his master to the battle-field, marched andhungered and thirsted with him, served and cheeredand nursed him—that master who was fighting tokeep him in slavery? Instances are too many; butthe one may be mentioned of a Kentucky negrowho followed his young master into the Southernarmy, stayed with him till he fell on the field, lay[85]hid out in the bushes a week, and finally, after a longtime and many hardships, got back to his mistressin Kentucky, bringing his dead master's horse andpurse and trinkets. This subject comprises a wholevast field of its own; and if the history of it is everwritten, it will be written in the literature of theSouth, for there alone lies the knowledge andthelove.

It is only through a clear view of the peculiarfeatures of slavery in Kentucky before the war thatone can understand the general status of the negroesof Kentucky at the present time. Perhapsin no other State has the race made less endeavorto push itself into equality with the white. Thisfact must be explained as in part resulting from theconservative ideals of Kentucky life in general. Butit is more largely due to the influences of a systemwhich, though no longer in vogue, is still remembered,still powerful to rule the minds of a naturallysubmissive and susceptible people. The kind, affectionaterelations of the races under the old regimehave continued with so little interruption that theblacks remain content with their inferiority, andlazily drift through life. I venture to make thestatement that, wherever in the United States theyhave attempted most to enforce their new-bornrights, they have either, on the one hand, been encouragedto do so, or have, on the other, been drivento self-assertion by harsh treatment. But treated[86]always kindly, always as hopelessly inferior beings,they will do least for themselves. This, it is believed,is the key-note to the situation in Kentuckyat the present time.[87]

COUNTY COURT DAY IN KENTUCKY

The institutions of the Kentuckian havedeep root in his rich social nature. Heloves the swarm. They very motto ofthe State is a declaration of good-fellowship,and the seal of the commonwealth the act ofshaking hands. Divided, he falls. The Kentuckianmust be one of many; must assert himself, notthrough the solitary exercise of his intellect, but thesenses; must see men about him who are fat, griphis friend, hear cordial, hearty conversation, realizethe play of his emotions. Society is the multipleof himself.

Hence his fondness for large gatherings: open-airassemblies of the democratic sort—great agriculturalfairs, race-courses, political meetings, barbecues andburgoos in the woods—where no one is pushed tothe wall, or reduced to a seat and to silence, whereall may move about at will, seek and be sought, makeand receive impressions. Quiet masses of peoplein-doors absorb him less. He is not fond of lectures,does not build splendid theatres or expendlavishly for opera, is almost of Puritan excellence in[90]the virtue of church-going, which in the country isattended with neighborly reunions.

This large social disposition underlies the historyof the most social of all his days—a day that haslong had its observance embedded in the structureof his law, is invested with the authority and charmof old-time usage and reminiscence, and still enableshim to commingle business and pleasure in a wayof his own. Hardly more characteristic of theAthenian was the agora, or the forum of the Roman,than is county court day characteristic of theKentuckian. In the open square around the courthouseof the county-seat he has had the centre ofhis public social life, the arena of his passions andamusements, the rallying-point of his political discussions,the market-place of his business transactions,the civil unit of his institutional history.

It may be that some stranger has sojourned longenough in Kentucky to have grown familiar withthe wonted aspects of a county town. He has remarkedthe easy swing of its daily life: amicablegroups of men sitting around the front entrances ofthe hotels; the few purchasers and promenaders onthe uneven brick pavements; the few vehicles ofdraught and carriage scattered along the level whitethoroughfares. All day the subdued murmur ofpatient local traffic has scarcely drowned the twitteringof English sparrows in the maples. Thencomes a Monday morning when the whole scene[91]changes. The world has not been dead, but onlysleeping. Whence this sudden surging crowd ofrural folk—these lowing herds in the streets? Is itsome animated pastoral come to town? some joyfulpublic anniversary? some survival in altered guiseof the English country fair of mellower times? ora vision of what the little place will be a centuryhence, when American life shall be packed andagitated and tense all over the land? What a worldof homogeneous, good-looking, substantial, reposefulpeople with honest front and amiable meaning![92]What bargaining and buying and selling by ever-forming,ever-dissolving groups, with quiet laughterand familiar talk and endless interchange of domesticinterrogatories! You descend into the street tostudy the doings and spectacles from a nearer approach,and stop to ask the meaning of it. Ah! itis county court day in Kentucky; it is the Kentuckiansin the market-place.

They have been assembling here now for nearlya hundred years. One of the first demands of theyoung commonwealth in the woods was that its vigorous,passionate life should be regulated by theusages of civil law. Its monthly county courts, withjustices of the peace, were derived from the Virginiasystem of jurisprudence, where they formed the aristocraticfeature of the government. Virginia itselfowed these models to England; and thus the influenceof the courts and of the decent and orderlyyeomanry of both lands passed, as was singularlyfitting, over into the ideals of justice erected by thepure-blooded colony. As the town meeting of Bostontown perpetuated the folkmote of the Anglo-Saxonfree state, and the Dutch village communitieson the shores of the Hudson revived the older[93]ones on the banks of the Rhine, so in Kentucky,through Virginia, there were transplanted by thepeople, themselves of clean stock and with strongconservative ancestral traits, the influences and elementsof English law in relation to the county, thecourt, and the justice of the peace.

Through all the old time of Kentucky State-lifethere towers up the figure of the justice of the peace.Commissioned by the Governor to hold monthlycourt, he had not always a court-house wherein tosit, but must buy land in the midst of a settlementor town whereon to build one, and build also thecontiguous necessity of civilization—a jail. In therude court-room he had a long platform erected,usually running its whole width; on this platform[94]he had a ruder wooden bench placed, likewise extendingall the way across; and on this bench, havingridden into town, it may be, in dun-colored leggings,broadcloth pantaloons, a pigeon-tailed coat, ashingle-caped overcoat, and a twelve-dollar high furhat, he sat gravely and sturdily down amid his peers;looking out upon the bar, ranged along a woodenbench beneath, and prepared to consider the legalneeds of his assembled neighbors. Among themall the very best was he; chosen for age, wisdom,means, weight and probity of character; as a rule,not profoundly versed in the law, perhaps knowingnothing of it—being a Revolutionary soldier, a pioneer,or a farmer—but endowed with a sure, robustcommon-sense and rectitude of spirit that enabledhim to divine what the law was; shaking himselffiercely loose from the grip of mere technicalities,and deciding by the natural justice of the case; givingdecisions of equal authority with the highestcourt, an appeal being rarely taken; perpetuatinghis own authority by appointing his own associates:with all his shortcomings and weaknesses a notable,historic figure, high-minded, fearless, and incorruptible,dignified, patient, and strong, and making thecounty court days of Kentucky for wellnigh half acentury memorable to those who have lived to seejustice less economically and less honorably administered.

But besides the legal character and intent of the[95]day, which was thus its first and dominant feature,divers things drew the folk together. Even the justicehimself may have had quite other than magisterialreasons for coming to town; certainly thepeople had. They must interchange opinions aboutlocal and national politics, observe the workings oftheir own laws, pay and contract debts, acquire andtransfer property, discuss all questions relative tothe welfare of the community—holding, in fact, acounty court day much like one in Virginia in themiddle of the seventeenth century.

III

But after business was over, time hung idly ontheir hands; and being vigorous men, hardened bywork in forest and field, trained in foot and limb tofleetness and endurance, and fired with admirationof physical prowess, like riotous school-boys out ona half-holiday, they fell to playing. All through thefirst quarter of the century, and for a longer time,county court day in Kentucky was, at least in manyparts of the State, the occasion for holding athleticgames. The men, young or in the sinewy manhoodof more than middle age, assembled once a monthat the county-seats to witness and take part in thefeats of muscle and courage. They wrestled, threw[96]the sledge, heaved the bar, divided and played atfives, had foot-races for themselves, and quarter-racesfor their horses. By-and-by, as these contestsbecame a more prominent feature of the day, theywould pit against each other the champions of differentneighborhoods. It would become widelyknown beforehand that next county court day "thebully" in one end of the county would whip "thebully" in the other end; so when court day came,and the justices came, and the bullies came, whatwas the county to do but come also? The crowdrepaired to the common, a ring was formed, the littlemen on the outside who couldn't see, Zaccheus-like,took to the convenient trees, and there was to beseen a fair and square set-to, in which the fist wasthe battering-ram and the biceps a catapult. Whatbetter, more time-honored, proof could those backwoodsKentuckians have furnished of the humors intheir English blood and of their English pugnacity?But, after all, this was only play, and play never isperfectly satisfying to a man who would ratherfight; so from playing they fell to harder work, andthroughout this period county court day was themonthly Monday on which the Kentuckian regularlydid his fighting. He availed himself liberally ofelection day, it is true, and of regimental muster inthe spring and battalion muster in the fall—greatgala occasions; but county court day was by allodds the preferred and highly prized season. It[97][98][99]was periodical, and could be relied upon, being writtenin the law, noted in the almanac, and registeredin the heavens.

A capital day, a most admirable and serene dayfor fighting. Fights grew like a fresh-water polype—bybeing broken in two: each part produced aprogeny. So conventional did the recreation becomethat difficulties occurring out in the countrybetween times regularly had their settlements postponeduntil the belligerents could convene with thejustices. The men met and fought openly in thestreets, the friends of each standing by to see fairplay and whet their appetites.

Thus the justices sat quietly on the bench inside,and the people fought quietly in the streets outside,and the day of the month set apart for the conservationof the peace became the approved day for individualwar. There is no evidence to be had thateither the justices or the constables ever interfered.

These pugilistic encounters had a certain law ofbeauty: they were affairs of equal combat and of courage.The fight over, animosity was gone, the feudended. The men must shake hands, go and drinktogether, become friends. We are touching hereupon a grave and curious fact of local history. Thefighting habit must be judged by a wholly uniquestandard. It was the direct outcome of racial traitspowerfully developed by social conditions.[100]

Another noticeable recreation of the day was thedrinking. Indeed the two pleasures went marvellouslywell together. The drinking led up to thefighting, and the fighting led up to the drinking;and this amiable co-operation might be prolongedat will. The merchants kept barrels of whiskeyin their cellars for their customers. Bottles of itsat openly on the counter, half-way between thepocket of the buyer and the shelf of merchandise.There were no saloons separate from the taverns.At these whiskey was sold and drunk withoutscreens or scruples. It was not usually bought bythe drink, but by the tickler. The tickler was abottle of narrow shape, holding a half-pint—justenough to tickle. On a county court day wellnigha whole town would be tickled. In some parts ofthe State tables were placed out on the sidewalks,and around these the men sat drinking mint-julepsand playing draw poker and "old sledge."

Meantime the day was not wholly given over toplaying and fighting and drinking. More and moreit was becoming the great public day of the month,and mirroring the life and spirit of the times—onoccasion a day of fearful, momentous gravity, as in[101]the midst of war, financial distress, high party feeling;more and more the people gathered togetherfor discussion and the origination of measures determiningthe events of their history. Gradually newfeatures incrusted it. The politician, observing thecrowd, availed himself of it to announce his owncandidacy or to wage a friendly campaign, sure,whether popular or unpopular, of a courteous hearing;for this is a virtue of the Kentuckian, to bepolite to a public speaker, however little liked his[102]cause. In the spring, there being no fairs, it wasthe occasion for exhibiting the fine stock of thecountry, which was led out to some suburban pasture,where the owners made speeches over it. Inthe winter, at the close of the old or the beginningof the new year, negro slaves were regularly hiredout on this day for the ensuing twelvemonth, andsometimes put upon the block before the Courthousedoor and sold for life.

But it was not until near the half of the secondquarter of the century that an auctioneer originatedstock sales on the open square, and thus gave to theday the characteristic it has since retained of beingthe great market-day of the month. Thenceforthits influence was to be more widely felt, to be extendedinto other counties and even States; thenceforthit was to become more distinctively a localinstitution without counterpart.

To describe minutely the scenes of a countycourt day in Kentucky, say at the end of the half-century,would be to write a curious page in thehistory of the times; for they were possible onlythrough the unique social conditions they portrayed.It was near the most prosperous period of State lifeunder the old regime. The institution of slaverywas about to culminate and decline. Agriculturehad about as nearly perfected itself as it was everdestined to do under the system of bondage. Thewar cloud in the sky of the future could be covered[103]with the hand, or at most with the country gentleman'sbroad-brimmed straw-hat. The whole atmosphereof the times was heavy with ease, and thepeople, living in perpetual contemplation of theirsuperabundant natural wealth, bore the quality ofthe land in their manners and dispositions.

When the well-to-do Kentucky farmer got up inthe morning, walked out into the porch, stretchedhimself, and looked at the sun, he knew that hecould summon a sleek kindly negro to executeevery wish and whim—one to search for his misplacedhat, a second to bring him a dipper of ice-water,a third to black his shoes, a fourth to saddlehis horse and hitch it at the stiles, a fifth to cookhis breakfast, a sixth to wait on him at the table, aseventh to stand on one side and keep off the flies.Breakfast over, he mounted his horse and rode outwhere "the hands" were at work. The chance washis overseer or negro foreman was there before him:his presence was unnecessary. What a gentlemanhe was! This was called earning one's bread bythe sweat of his brow.Whose brow? He yawned.What should he do? One thing he knew hewoulddo—take a good nap before dinner. Perhaps hehad better ride over to the blacksmith-shop. However,there was nobody there. It was county courtday. The sky was blue, the sun golden, the air delightful,the road broad and smooth, the gait of hishorse the very poetry of motion. He would go to[104]county court himself. There was really nothing elsebefore him. His wife would want to go, too, and thechildren.

So away they go, he on horseback or in the familycarriage, with black Pompey driving in front andyellow Cæsar riding behind. The turnpike reached,the progress of the family carriage is interrupted orquite stopped, for there are many other carriages onthe road, all going in the same direction. Then pa,growing impatient, orders black Pompey to driveout on one side, whip up the horses, pass the others,and get ahead, so as to escape from the clouds ofwhite limestone dust, which settles thick on thevelvet collar of pa's blue cloth coat and in the delicatepink marabou feathers of ma's bonnet: whichPompey can't do, for the faster he goes, the fasterthe others go, making all the more dust; so that pagets red in the face, and jumps up in the seat, andlooks ready to fight, and thrusts his head out of thewindow and knocks off his hat; and ma looks nervous,and black Pompey and yellow Cæsar both lookwhite with dust and fear.

A rural cavalcade indeed! Besides the carriages,buggies, horsemen, and pedestrians, there are longdroves of stock being hurried on towards the town—hundredsof them. By the time they come togetherin the town they will be many thousands.For is not this the great stock-market of the West,and does not the whole South look from its rich[105]plantations and cities up to Kentucky for bacon andmules? By-and-by our family carriage does at lastget to town, and is left out in the streets along withmany others to block up the passway according tothe custom.

The town is packed. It looks as though by somevast suction system it had with one exercise of forcedrawn all the country life into itself. The poordumb creatures gathered in from the peaceful fields,[106]and crowded around the Court-house, send forth,each after its kind, a general outcry of horror anddespair at the tumult of the scene and the unimaginablemystery of their own fate. They overflowinto the by-streets, where they take possession ofthe sidewalks, and debar entrance at private residences.No stock-pens wanted then; none wantednow. If a town legislates against these stock saleson the streets and puts up pens on its outskirts,straightway the stock is taken to some other market,and the town is punished for its airs by a decline inits trade.

As the day draws near noon, the tide of life is atthe flood. Mixed in with the tossing horns and nimbleheels of the terrified, distressed, half-maddenedbeasts, are the people. Above the level of these isthe discordant choir of shrill-voiced auctioneers onhorseback. At the corners of the streets long-haired—andlong-eared—doctors in curious hats lecture toeager groups on maladies and philanthropic cures.Every itinerant vender of notion and nostrum in thecountry-side is there; every wandering Italian harperor musician of any kind, be he but a sightlessfiddler, who brings forth with poor unison of voiceand string the brief and too fickle ballads of thetime, "Gentle Annie," and "Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt."Strangely contrasted with everything else in physicaltype and marks of civilization are the mountaineers,who have come down to "the settlemints"[107]driving herds of their lean, stunted cattle, or bringing,in slow-moving, ox-drawn "steamboat" wagons,maple-sugar, and baskets, and poles, and wild mountainfruit—faded wagons, faded beasts, faded clothes,faded faces, faded everything. A general day forbuying and selling all over the State. What purchasesat the dry-goods stores and groceries to keepall those negroes at home fat and comfortable andcomely—cottons, and gay cottonades, and gorgeousturbans, and linseys of prismatic dyes, bags of Riocoffee and barrels of sugar, with many anotherpleasant thing! All which will not be taken homein the family carriage, but in the wagon which ScipioAfricanus is driving in; Scipio, remember; for whilethe New Englander has been naming his own fleshand blood Peleg and Hezekiah and Abednego, theKentuckian has been giving even his negro slavesmighty and classic names, after his taste and fashion.But very mockingly and satirically do those victorioustitles contrast with the condition of those thatwear them. A surging populace, an in-town holidayfor all rural folk, wholly unlike what may be seenelsewhere in this country. The politician will besure of his audience to-day in the Court-house yard:the seller will be sure of the purchaser; the idleman of meeting one still idler; friend of seeing distantfriend; blushing Phyllis, come in to buy freshribbons, of being followed through the throng byanxious Corydon.[108]

And what, amid this tumult of life and affairs—whatof the justice of the peace, whose figure oncetowered up so finely? Alas! quite outgrown, pushedaside, and wellnigh forgotten. The very name ofthe day which once so sternly commemorated theexercise of his authority has wandered into anothermeaning. "County court day" no longer brings upin the mind the image of the central Court-houseand the judge on the bench. It is to be greatlyfeared his noble type is dying. The stain of venalityhas soiled his homespun ermine, and the trail ofthe office-seeker passed over his rough-hewn bench.So about this time the new constitution of the commonwealthcomes in, to make the autocratic ancientjustice over into the modern elective magistrate, andwith the end of the half-century to close a greatchapter of wonderful county court days.

But what changes in Kentucky since 1850! Howhas it fared with the day meantime? What developmenthas it undergone? What contrasts will itshow?

Undoubtedly, as seen now, the day is not more interestingby reason of the features it wears than forthe sake of comparison with the others it has lost.A singular testimony to the conservative habits ofthe Kentuckian, and to the stability of his local institutions,is to be found in the fact that it shouldhave come through all this period of upheaval anddownfall, of shifting and drifting, and yet remained[109][110][111]so much the same. Indeed, it seems in no wise liableto lose its meaning of being the great marketand general business day as well as the great socialand general laziness day of the month and the State.Perhaps one feature has taken larger prominence—theeager canvassing of voters by local politiciansand office-seekers for weeks, sometimes for months,beforehand. Is it not known that even circuit courtwill adjourn on this day so as to give the clerk andthe judge, the bar, the witnesses, an opportunity tohear rival candidates address the assembled crowd?And yet we shall discover differences. These people—thesegroups of twos and threes and hundreds,lounging, sitting, squatting, taking every imaginableposture that can secure bodily comfort—are they inany vital sense new Kentuckians in the new South?If you care to understand whether this be true, andwhat it may mean if it is true, you shall not find abetter occasion for doing so than a contemporarycounty court day.

The Kentuckian nowadays does not come tocounty court to pick a quarrel or to settle one. Hehas no quarrel. His fist has reverted to its naturaluse and become a hand. Nor does he go armed.Positively it is true that gentlemen in this State donot now get satisfaction out of each other in themarket-place, and that on a modern county courtday a three-cornered hat is hardly to be seen. Andyet you will go on defining a Kentuckian in terms[112]of his grandfather, unaware that he has changedfaster than the family reputation. The fightinghabit and the shooting habit were both more thansatisfied during the Civil War.

Another old-time feature of the day has disappeared—theopen use of the pioneer beverage.Merchants do not now set it out for their customers;in the country no longer is it the law of hospitalityto offer it to a guest. To do so would commonlybe regarded in the light of as great a libertyas to have omitted it once would have been consideredan offence. The decanter is no longer foundon the sideboard in the home; the barrel is notstored in the cellar.

Some features of the old Kentucky market-placehave disappeared. The war and the prostration ofthe South destroyed that as a market for certainkinds of stock, the raising and sales of which havein consequence declined. Railways have touchedthe eastern parts of the State, and broken up thedistant toilsome traffic with the steamboat wagonsof the mountaineers. No longer is the day the generalbuying day for the circumjacent country asformerly, when the farmers, having great householdsof slaves, sent in their wagons and bought on twelvemonths' credit, knowing it would be twenty-fourmonths' if they desired. The doctors, too, havenearly vanished from the street corners, though onthe highway one may still happen upon the peddler[113][114][115]with his pack, and in the midst of an eager throngstill may meet the swaying, sightless old fiddler,singing to ears that never tire gay ditties in acracked and melancholy tone.

Through all changes one feature has remained.It goes back to the most ancient days of local history.The Kentuckianwill come to county court"to swap horses;" it is in the blood. In one smalltown may be seen fifty or a hundred countrymenassembled during the afternoon in a back street toengage in this delightful recreation. Each rides orleads his worst, most objectionable beast; of these,however fair-seeming, none is above suspicion. Itis the potter's field, the lazar-house, the beggardom,of horse-flesh. The stiff and aged bondsman of theglebe and plough looks out of one filmy eye uponthe hopeless wreck of the fleet roadster, and thepoor macerated carcass that in days gone by boreits thankless burden over the glistening turnpikeswith the speed and softness of the wind has not thestrength to return the contemptuous kick which isgiven him by a lungless, tailless rival. Prices rangefrom nothing upward. Exchanges are made for apiece of tobacco or a watermelon to boot.

But always let us return from back streets andside thoughts to the central Court-house square andthe general assembly of the people. Go amongthem; they are not dangerous. Do not use finewords, at which they will prick up their ears uneasily;[116]or delicate sentiments, which will make you lessliked; or indulge in flights of thought, which theydespise. Remember, here is the dress and the talkand the manners of the street, and fashion yourselfaccordingly. Be careful of your speech; men inKentucky are human. If you can honestly praisethem, do so. How they will glow and expand!Censure, and you will get the cold shoulder. Forto them praise is friendship and censure enmity.They have wonderful solidarity. Sympathy will onoccasion flow through them like an electric current,so that they will soften and melt, or be set on fire.There is a Kentucky sentiment, expending itself incomplacent, mellow love of the land, the people, theinstitutions. You speak to them of the happinessof living in parts of the world where life has infinitevariety, nobler general possibilities, greatergains, harder struggles; they say, "We are just ashappy here." "It is easier to make a living inKentucky than to keep from being run over inNew York," said a young Kentuckian, and homehe went.

If you attempt to deal with them in the businessof the market-place, do not trick or cheat them.Above all things they hate and despise intrigue anddeception. For one single act of dishonor a manwill pay with life-long aversion and contempt. Therage it puts them in to be charged with lying themselvesis the exact measure of the excitement with[117][118][119]which they regard the lie in others. This is one oftheir idols—an idol of the market-place in the truemeaning of the Baconian philosophy. The newKentuckian has not lost an old-time trait of character:so high and delicate a sense of personal honorthat to be told he lies is the same as saying he hasceased to be a gentleman. Along with good faithand fair dealing goes liberality. Not prodigality;they have changed all that. The fresh system ofthings has produced no more decided result than adifferent regard for material interests. You shallnot again charge the Kentuckians with lacking either"the telescopic appreciation of distant gain," orthe microscopic appreciation of present gain. Theinfluence of money is active, and the illusion of wealthbecome a reality. Profits are now more likely topass into accumulation and structure. There ismore discussion of costs and values. Small economiesare more dwelt upon in thought and conversation.Actually you shall find the people higglingwith the dealer over prices. And yet how significanta fact is it in their life that the merchant doesnot, as a rule, give exact change over the counter!At least the cent has not yet been put under themicroscope.

Perhaps you will not accept it as an evidence ofprogress that so many men will leave their businessall over the country for an idle day once a month intown—nay, oftener than once a month; for many[120]who are at county court in this place to-day will attendit in another county next Monday. But do notbe deceived by the lazy appearance of the streets.There are fewer idlers than of old. You may thinkthis quiet group of men who have taken possessionof a buggy or a curb-stone are out upon a costlyholiday. Draw near, and it is discovered that thereis fresh, eager, intelligent talk of the newest agriculturalimplements and of scientific farming. Infact the day is to the assembled farmers the seedtimeof ideas, to be scattered in ready soil—an informal,unconscious meeting of grangers.

There seems to be a striking equality of stationsand conditions. Having travelled through manytowns, and seen these gatherings together of allclasses, you will be pleased with the fair, attractive,average prosperity, and note the almost entire absenceof paupers and beggars. Somehow misfortuneand ill-fortune and old age save themselves herefrom the last hard necessity of asking alms on thehighway. But the appearance of the people willeasily lead you to a wrong inference as to socialequality. They are much less democratic than theyseem, and their dress and speech and manners inthe market-place are not their best equipment. Youshall meet with these in their homes. In theirhomes, too, social distinctions begin and are enforced,and men who find in the open square a commonfooting never associate elsewhere. But even among[121][122][123]the best of the new Kentuckians will you hardlyobserve fidelity to the old social ideals, which adjudgedthat the very flower of birth and trainingmust bloom in the bearing and deportment. Withthe crumbling and downfall of the old system fellalso the structure of fine manners, which were atonce its product and adornment.

A new figure has made its appearance in theKentucky market-place, having set its face resolutelytowards the immemorial Court-house and this periodicgathering together of freemen. Beyond comparisonthe most significant new figure that hasmade its way thither and cast its shadow on thepeople and the ground. Writ all over with problemsthat not the wisest can read. Stalking out ofan awful past into what uncertain future! Clothedin hanging rags, it may be, or a garb that is a mosaicof strenuous patches. Ah! Pompey, or Cæsar, orCicero, of the days of slavery, where be thy familycarriage, thy master and mistress, now?

He comes into the county court, this old African,because he is a colored Kentuckian and must honorthe stable customs of the country. He does littlebuying or selling; he is not a politician; he has no[124]debt to collect, and no legal business. Still, exampleis powerful and the negro imitative, so here he is atcounty court. It is one instance of the influenceexerted over him by the institutions of the Kentuckian,so that he has a passion for fine stock, mustbuild amphitheatres and hold fairs and attend races.Naturally, therefore, county court has become a greatsocial day with his race. They stop work and comein from the country, or from the outskirts of thetown, where they have congregated in little framehouses, and exhibit a quasi-activity in whatever ofbusiness and pleasure is going forward. In noother position of life does he exhibit his characterand his condition more strikingly than here. Alwayscomical, always tragical, light-hearted, sociable;his shackles stricken off, but wearing those of hisown indolence, ignorance, and helplessness; the wanderingSocrates of the streets, always dropping littleshreds of observation on human affairs and bits ofphilosophy on human life; his memory working withlast Sunday's sermon, and his hope with to-morrow'sbread; citizen, with so much freedom and so littleliberty—the negro forms one of the conspicuousfeatures of a county court day at the present time.

A wonderful, wonderful day this is that does thusalways keep pace with civilization in the State, drawingall elements to itself, and portraying them to theinterpreting eye. So that to paint the scenes of thecounty court days in the past is almost to write the[125]history of the contemporary periods; and to do asmuch with one of the present hour is to depict theoldest influences that has survived and the newestthat has been born in this local environment. Tothe future student of governmental and institutionalhistory in this country, a study always interesting,always important, and always unique, will be countycourt day in Kentucky.[126]
[127]
[128]

KENTUCKY FAIRS

The nineteenth century opened gravely forthe Kentuckians. Little akin as was thespirit of the people to that of the Puritans,life among them had been almost asgranitic in its hardness and ruggedness and desolateunrelief. The only thing in the log-cabin that hadsung from morning till night was the spinning-wheel.Not much behind those women but danger, anxiety,vigils, devastation, mournful tragedies; scarce oneof them but might fitly have gone to her loom andwoven herself a garment of sorrow. Not much behindthose men but felling of trees, clearing of land,raising of houses, opening of roads, distressing problemsof State, desolating wars of the republic. Mostcould remember the time when it was so commonfor a man to be killed, that to lie down and die anatural death seemed unnatural. Many must havehad in their faces the sadness that was in the faceof Lincoln.

Nevertheless, from the first, there had stood outamong the Kentuckians broad exhibitions of exuberantanimal vigor, of unbridled animal spirits. Somesingularly and faithfully enough in the ancestral[130]vein of English sports and relaxations—dog-fightingand cock-fighting, rifle target-shooting, wrestlingmatches, foot-racing for the men, and quarter-racingfor the horses. Without any thought of makingspectacles or of becoming themselves a spectaclein history, they were always ready to form an impromptuarena and institute athletic games. Theyhad even their gladiators. Other rude pleasureswere more characteristic of their environment—thelog-rolling and the quilting, the social frolic of theharvesting, the merry parties of flax-pullers, and thecorn-husking at nightfall, when the men divided intosides, and the green glass whiskey-bottle, stoppedwith a corn-cob, was filled and refilled and passedfrom mouth to mouth, until out of those lustythroats rose and swelled a rhythmic choral songthat could be heard in the deep woods a mile ormore away: at midnight those who were sober tookhome those who were drunk. But of course noneof these were organized amusements. They arenot instances of taking pleasures sadly, but of attemptsto do much hard, rough work with gladness.Other occasions, also, which have the semblance ofpopular joys, and which certainly were not passedover without merriment and turbulent, disorderlyfun, were really set apart for the gravest of civic andpolitical reasons: militia musters, stump-speakings,county court day assemblages, and the yearly Julycelebrations. Still other pleasures were of an economic[131][132][133]or utilitarian nature. Thus the novel andexciting contests by parties of men at squirrel-shootinglooked to the taking of that destructive animal'sscalp, to say nothing of the skin; the hunting ofbeehives in the woods had some regard to the scarcityof sugar; and the nut gatherings and wild-grapegatherings by younger folks in the gorgeous autumnaldays were partly in memory of a scant, unvariedlarder, which might profitably draw upon nature'srich and salutary hoard. Perhaps the dearest pleasuresamong them were those that lay closest totheir dangers. They loved the pursuit of maraudingparties, the solitary chase; were always ready tothrow away axe and mattock for rifle and knife.Among pleasures, certainly, should be mentionedthe weddings. For plain reasons these were commonlyheld in the daytime. Men often rode tothem armed, and before leaving too often madethem scenes of carousal and unchastened jocularities.After the wedding came the "infare," withthe going from the home of the bride to the homeof the groom. Above everything else that seems tostrike the chord of common happiness in the societyof the time, stands out to the imagination the pictureof one of these processions—a long bridal cavalcadewinding slowly along a narrow road throughthe silent primeval forest, now in sunlight, now inthe shadow of mighty trees meeting over the way;at the head the young lovers, so rudely mounted, so[134]simply dressed, and, following in their happy wake,as though they were the augury of a peaceful erasoon to come, a straggling, broken line of the menand women who had prepared for that era, butshould never live to see its appearing.

Such scenes as these give a touch of bright, gaycolor to the dull homespun texture of the socialfabric of the times. Indeed, when all the pleasureshave been enumerated, they seem a good many.But the effect of such an enumeration is misleading.Life remained tense, sad, barren; charactermoulded itself on a model of Spartan simplicity andhardihood, without the Spartan treachery and cunning.

But from the opening of the nineteenth centurythings grew easier. The people, rescued from thenecessity of trying to be safe, began to indulge theluxury of wishing to be happy. Life ceased to be awarfare, and became an industry; the hand left offdefending, and commenced acquiring; the mouldingof bullets was succeeded by the coining ofdollars.

It is against the background of such a strenuouspast that we find the Kentucky fair first projectedby the practical and progressive spirit that ruled[135]among the Kentuckians in the year 1816. Nothingcould have been conceived with soberer purpose,or worn less the aspect of a great popularpleasure. Picture the scene! A distinguished soldierand honored gentleman, with a taste for agricultureand fine cattle, has announced that on acertain day in July he will hold on his farm a"Grand Cattle Show and Fair, free for everybody."The place is near Lexington, which was then thecentre of commerce and seat of learning in the[136]West. The meagre newspapers of the time havecarried the tidings to every tavern and countrycross-roads. It is a novel undertaking; the like hasnever been known this side of the Alleghanies.The summer morning come, you may see a very remarkablecompany of gentlemen: old pioneers, Revolutionarysoldiers, volunteers of the War of 1812,walking in picturesque twos and threes out of thelittle town to the green woods where the fair is tobe held; others jogging thitherward along the bypathsand newly-opened roads through the forest,clad in homespun from heel to head, and mindfulof the cold lunches and whiskey-bottles in theircoat-pockets or saddle-bags; some, perhaps, drawnthither in wagons and aristocratic gigs. Once arrived,all stepping around loftily on the velvet grass,peering curiously into each other's eyes, and offeringtheir snuffboxes for a sneeze of convivial astonishmentthat they could venture to meet under theclear sky for such an undertaking. The five judgesof the fair, coming from as many different counties,the greatest personages of their day—one, a brilliantjudge of the Federal Court; the second, one of theearliest settlers, with a sword hanging up at hometo show how Virginia appreciated his services in theRevolution; the third, a soldier and blameless gentlemanof the old school; the fourth, one of the fewearly Kentuckians who brought into the new societythe noble style of country-place, with park and deer,[137]that would have done credit to an English lord; andthe fifth, in no respect inferior to the others. These"perform the duties assigned them with assiduity,"and hand over to their neighbors as many as fifteenor twenty premium silver cups, costing twelve dollarsapiece. After which, the assemblage variouslydisperses—part through the woods again, while partreturn to town.

Such, then, was the first Kentucky fair. It was atransplantation to Kentucky, not of the English orEuropean fair, but of the English cattle-show. Itresembled the fair only in being a place for buyingand selling. And it was not thought of in the lightof a merry-making or great popular amusement. Itseems not even to have taken account of manufactures—thenso important an industry—or of agriculture.

Like the first was the second fair held in thesame place the year following. Of this, little is andlittle need be known, save that then was formed thefirst State Agricultural Society of Kentucky, whichalso was the first in the West, and the second in theUnited States. This society held two or three annualmeetings, and then went to pieces, but not beforelaying down the broad lines on which the faircontinued to be held for the next quarter of a century.That is, the fair began as a cattle-show,though stock of other kinds was exhibited. Thenit was extended to embrace agriculture; and with[138]branches of good husbandry it embraced as wellthose of good housewifery. Thus at the early fairsone finds the farmers contesting for premiums withtheir wheats and their whiskeys, while their skilfulhelpmates displayed the products—the never-surpassedproducts—of their looms: linens, cassinettes,jeans, and carpetings.

With this brief outline we may pass over the nexttwenty years. The current of State life during thisinterval ran turbulent and stormy. Now politics,now finance, imbittered and distressed the people.Time and again, here and there, small societies revivedthe fair, but all efforts to expand it were unavailing.And yet this period must be distinguishedas the one during which the necessity of the fair becamewidely recognized; for it taught the Kentuckiansthat their chief interest lay in the soil, and thatphysical nature imposed upon them the agriculturaltype of life. Grass was to be their portionand their destiny. It taught them the insulationof their habitat, and the need of looking withintheir own society for the germs and laws of theirdevelopment. As soon as the people came to seethat they were to be a race of farmers, it is importantto note their concern that, as such, they shouldbe hedged with respectability. They took highground about it; they would not cease to be gentlemen;they would have their class well reputed forfat pastures and comfortable homes, but honored as[139]well for manners and liberal intelligence. And tothis end they had recourse to an agricultural literature.Thus, when the fair began to revive, withhappier auspices, near the close of the period underconsideration, they signalized it for nearly the quarter[140]of a century afterwards by instituting literary contests.Prizes and medals were offered for discoveriesand inventions which should be of interest tothe Kentucky agriculturist; and hundreds of dollarswere appropriated for the victors and the secondvictors in the writing of essays which should helpthe farmer to become a scientist and not to forgetto remain a gentleman. In addition, they sometimessat for hours in the open air while some eminentcitizen—the Governor, if possible—deliveredan address to commemorate the opening of the fair,and to review the progress of agricultural life in thecommonwealth. But there were many anti-literariansamong them, who conceived a sort of organizedhostility to what they aspersed as book-farming, andon that account withheld their cordial support.

III

It was not until about the year 1840 that the fairbegan to touch-the heart of the whole people. Beforethis time there had been no amphitheatre, nomusic, no booths, no side-shows, no ladies. A fairwithout ladies! How could the people love it, orever come to look upon it as their greatest annualoccasion for love-making?

An interesting commentary on the social decorum[141]of this period is furnished in the fact that for sometwenty years after the institution of the fair no womanput her foot upon the ground. She was thoughta bold woman, doing a bold deed, who one day tooka friend and, under the escort of gentlemen, drove inher own carriage to witness the showing of her ownfat cattle; for she was herself one of the most practicaland successful of Kentucky farmers. But whereone of the sex has been, may not all the sex—maynot all the world—safely follow? From the date ofthis event, and the appearance of women on thegrounds, the tide of popular favor set in steadilytowards the fair.

For, as an immediate consequence, seats must beprovided. Here one happens upon a curious bit oflocal history—the evolution of the amphitheatreamong the Kentuckians. At the earliest fairs thefirst form of the amphitheatre had been a ropestretched from tree to tree, while the spectators stoodaround on the outside, or sat on the grass or in theirvehicles. The immediate result of the necessity forproviding comfortable seats for the now increasingcrowd, was to select as a place for holding the fairsuch a site as the ancient Greeks might have chosenfor building a theatre. Sometimes this was the headof a deep ravine, around the sides of which seatswere constructed, while the bottom below served asthe arena for the exhibition of the stock, which wasled in and out through the mouth of the hollow. At[142]other times advantage was taken of a natural sinkand semicircular hill-side. The slope was soddedand terraced with rows of seats, and the spectatorslooked down upon the circular basin at the bottom.But clearly enough the sun played havoc with thecomplexions of the ladies, and a sudden drenchingshower was still one of the uncomfortable dispensationsof Providence. Therefore a roofed woodenstructure of temporary seats made its appearance,designed after the fashion of those used by the travellingshow, and finally out of this form came theclosed circular amphitheatre, modelled on the planof the Colosseum. Thus first among the Kentuckians,if I mistake not, one saw the English cattle-show,which meantime was gathering about itselfmany characteristics of the English fair, weddedstrangely enough to the temple of a Roman holiday.By-and-by we shall see this form of amphitheatretorn down and supplanted by another, which recallsthe ancient circus or race-course—a modificationcorresponding with a change in the character of thelater fair.

The most desirable spot for building the old circularamphitheatre was some beautiful tract of levelground containing from five to twenty acres, andsituated near a flourishing town and its ramifyingturnpikes. This tract must be enclosed by a highwooden paling, with here and there entrance gatesfor stock and pedestrians and vehicles, guarded by[143][144][145]gate-keepers. And within this enclosure appearedin quick succession all the varied accessories thatwent to make up a typical Kentucky fair near theclose of the old social regime; that is, before the outbreakof the Civil War.

Here were found the hundreds of neat stalls forthe different kinds of stock; the gay booths underthe colonnade of the amphitheatre for refreshments;the spacious cottages for women and invalids andchildren; the platforms of the quack-doctors; thefloral hall and the pagoda-like structure for themusicians and the judges; the tables and seats forprivate dining; the high swings and the turnabouts;the tests of the strength of limb and lung; the gaudyawnings for the lemonade venders; the huge brownhogsheads for iced-water, with bright tin cups danglingfrom the rim; the circus; and, finally, all thosetented spectacles of the marvellous, the mysterious,and the monstrous which were to draw popular attentionto the Kentucky fair, as they had been theparticular delight of the fair-going thousands inEngland hundreds of years before.

For you will remember that the Kentucky fairhas ceased by this time to be a cattle-show. It hasceased to be simply a place for the annual competitiveexhibition of stock of all kinds, which, by-the-way,is beginning to make the country famous. Ithas ceased to be even the harvest-home of the BluegrassRegion, the mild autumnal saturnalia of its[146]rural population. Whatever the people can discoveror invent is indeed here; or whatever they own, orcan produce from the bountiful earth, or take fromorchard or flower-garden, or make in dairy, kitchen,or loom-room. But the fair is more than all thisnow. It has become the great yearly pleasure-groundof the people assembled for a week's festivities.It is what the European fair of old was—theseason of the happiest and most general intercoursebetween country and town. Here the characteristicvirtues and vices of the local civilization will befound in open flower side by side, and types andmanners painted to the eye in vividest colorings.

Crowded picture of a time gone by! Bright glancingpageantry of life, moving on with feasting andmusic and love-making to the very edge of the awfulprecipice, over which its social system and its richlynurtured ideals will be dashed to pieces below!—whynot pause an instant over its innocent mirth, andquick, awful tragedies?

The fair has been in progress several days, andthis will be the greatest day of all: nothing shownfrom morning till night but horses—horses in harness,horses under the saddle. Ah! butthat will be[147][148][149]worth seeing! Late in the afternoon the little boyswill ride for premiums on their ponies, and, what isnot so pretty, but far more exciting, young men willcontest the prize of horsemanship. And then suchracking and pacing and loping and walking!—suchracing round and round and round to see who cango fastest, and be gracefulest, and turn quickest!Such pirouetting and curveting and prancing andcavorting and riding with arms folded across thebreast while the reins lie on the horse's neck, andsuddenly bowing over to the horse's mane, as somequeen of beauty high up in the amphitheatre, transportedby the excitement of the thousands of spectatorsand the closeness of the contest, throws herflowers and handkerchief down into the arena! Ah,yes! this will be the great day at the fair—at themodern tourney!

So the tide of the people is at the flood. Fordays they have been pouring into the town. Thehotels are overflowing with strangers; the openhouses of the citizens are full of guests. Strollingcompanies of players will crack the dusty boards tonightwith the tread of buskin and cothurnus. Theeasy-going tradespeople have trimmed their shops,and imported from the North their richest merchandise.

From an early hour of the morning, along everyroad that leads from country or town to the amphitheatre,pour the hurrying throng of people, eager to[150]get good seats for the day; for there will be thousandsnot seated at all. Streaming out, on the sideof the town, are pedestrians, hacks, omnibuses, thenegro drivers shouting, racing, cracking their whips,and sometimes running into the way-side standswhere old negro women are selling apples and gingerbread.Streaming in, on the side of the country,are pedestrians, heated, their coats thrown over theshoulder or the arm; buggies containing often a pairof lovers who do not keep their secret discreetly;family carriages with children made conspicuouslytidy and mothers aglow with the recent labors of thekitchen: comfortable evidences of which are thehuge baskets or hampers that are piled up in frontor strapped on behind. Nay, sometimes may beseen whole wagon-loads of provisions moving slowlyin, guarded by portly negresses, whose eyes shinelike black diamonds through the setting of theirwhite-dusted eyelashes.

Within the grounds, how rapidly the crowd swellsand surges hither and thither, tasting the pleasuresof the place before going to the amphitheatre: to thestalls, to the booths, to the swings, to the cottage, tothe floral hall, to the living curiosities, to the swinishpundits, who have learned their lessons in numbersand cards. Is not that the same pig that was shownat Bartholomew's four centuries ago? Mixed inwith the Kentuckians are people of a different buildand complexion. For Kentucky now is one of the[151][152][153]great summering States for the extreme Southerners,who come up with their families to its watering-places.Others who are scattered over the North returnin the autumn by way of Kentucky, remainingtill the fair and the fall of the first frost. Nay, isnot the State the place for the reunion of familiesthat have Southern members? Back to the oldhome from the rice and sugar and cotton plantationsof the swamps and the bayous come young Kentuckywives with Southern husbands, young Kentuckyhusbands with Southern wives. All these areat the fair—the Lexington fair. Here, too, arestrangers from wellnigh every Northern State. And,I beg you, do not overlook the negroes—a solidacre of them. They play unconsciously a great partin the essential history of this scene and festival.Briskly grooming the stock in the stalls; strollingaround with carriage whips in their hands; runningon distant errands; showering a tumult of blowsupon the newly-arrived "boss" with their nimble,ubiquitous brush-brooms; everywhere, everywhere,happy, well-dressed, sleek—the fateful backgroundof all this stage of social history.

But the amphitheatre! Through the mild, chastened,soft-toned atmosphere of the early Septemberday the sunlight falls from the unclouded sky uponthe seated thousands. Ah, the women in all theirsilken and satin bravery! delicate blue and pink andcanary-colored petticoats, with muslin over-dresses,[154]black lace and white lace mantles, white kid gloves,and boots to match the color of their petticoats.One stands up to allow a lemonade-seller to pass;she wears a hoop-skirt twelve feet in circumference.Here and there costumes suitable for a ball; armsand shoulders glistening like marble in the sunlight;gold chains around the delicate arching necks. Oh,the jewels, the flowers, the fans, the parasols, the ribbons,the soft eyes and smiles, the love and happiness!And some of the complexions!—paint on thecheeks, powder on the neck, stick-pomatum plasteringthe beautiful hair down over the temples. Nomatter; it is the fashion. Rub it in! Rub it inwell—up to the very roots of the hair and eyebrows!Now, how perfect you are, madam! You are thegreat Kentucky show of life-size wax-works.

In another part of the amphitheatre nothing butmen, red-faced, excited, standing up on the seats,shouting, applauding, as the rival horses rush roundthe ring before them. It is not difficult to knowwho these are. The money streams through theirfingers. Did you hear the crack of that pistol?How the crowd swarms angrily. Stand back! Aman has been shot. He insulted a gentleman. Hecalled him a liar. Be careful. There are a greatmany pistols on the fair grounds.

In all the United States where else is there to beseen any such holiday assemblage of people—anysuch expression of the national life impressed with[155]local peculiarities? Where else is there to be seen anything that, whileit falls far behind, approaches so near the spirit of uproariousmerriment, of reckless fun, which used to intoxicate and madden theEnglish populace when given over to the sports of a ruder age?

These are the descendants of the sad pioneers—ofthose early cavalcades which we glanced at inthe primeval forests a few minutes ago. Thesehave subdued the land, and are reclining on itstranquil autumn fulness. Time enough to playnow—more time than there ever was before; morethan there will ever be again. They have establishedtheir great fair here on the very spot wheretheir forefathers were massacred or put to torture.So, at old Smithfield, the tumblers, the jesters, the[156]buffoons, and the dancers shouldered each other injoyful riot over the ashes of the earlier heroes andmartyrs.

It is past high noon, and the thousands breakaway from the amphitheatre and move towards asoft green woodland in another part of the grounds,shaded by forest trees. Here are the private dinner-tables—hundredsof them, covered with snowy linen,glittering with glass and silver. You have heard ofKentucky hospitality; here you will see one of thepeaceful battle-fields where reputation for that virtueis fought for and won. Is there a stranger amongthese thousands that has not been hunted up andprovided for? And such dinners! Old Pepysshould be here—immortal eater—so that he couldgo home and set down in his diary, along with othergastronomic adventures, garrulous notes of what hesaw eaten and ate himself at the Kentucky fair.You will never see the Kentuckians making a bettershow than at this moment. What courtesy, whatgood-will, what warm and gracious manners! Tie ablue ribbon on them. In a competitive exhibitionof this kind the premium will stay at home.

But make the most of it—make the most of thisharmony. For did you see that? A father and ason met each other, turned their heads quickly andangrily away, and passed without speaking.

Look how these two men shake hands with toomuch cordiality, and search each other's eyes. There[157]is a man from the North standing apart and watchingwith astonishment these alert, happy, efficient negroes—perhapsfollowing with his thoughtful gazeone of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Toms. A Southernerhas drawn that Kentucky farmer beside a tree, and istrying to buy one of these servants for his plantation.Yes, yes, make the most of it! The war iscoming. It is in men's hearts, and in their eyesand consciences. By-and-by this bright, gay pageantwill pass so entirely away that even the thought ofit will come back to one like the unsubstantial revelryof a dream. By-and-by there will be anotherthrong filling these grounds: not in pink and whiteand canary, but in blue, solid blue—blue overcoats,showing sad and cold above the snow. All roundthe amphitheatre tents will be spread—not covering,as now, the hideous and the monstrous, but the sleeping[158]forms of young men, athletic, sinewy, beautiful.This, too, shall vanish. And some day, when thefierce summer sun is killing the little gray leaves andblades of grass, in through these deserted gates willpass a long, weary, foot-sore line of brown. Nothingin the floral hall now but cots, around which arenurses and weeping women. Lying there, somepoor young fellow, with the death dew on his forehead,will open his shadowy eyes and remember thisday of the fair, where he walked among the flowersand made love.

But it is late in the afternoon, and the people arebeginning to disperse by turnpike and lane to theirhomes in the country, or to hasten back into townfor the festivities of the night; for to-night the spiritof the fair will be continued in other amphitheatres.To-night comedy and tragedy will tread the villageboards; but hand in hand also they will flaunt theircolors through the streets, and haunt the midnightalleys. In all the year no time like fair-time: partiesat private houses; hops, balls at the hotels. Youshall sip the foam from the very crest of the wave ofrevelry and carousal. Darkness be over it till theeast reddens! Let Bacchus be unconfined![159]

The fair languished during the war, but the peoplewere not slow to revive it upon the return ofpeace. Peace, however, could never bring back thefair of the past: it was gone forever—gone with thestage and phase of the social evolution of which itwas the unique and memorable expression. Forthere was no phase of social evolution in Kentuckybut felt profoundly that era of upheaval, drift, andreadjustment. Start where we will, or end wherewe may, we shall always come sooner or later to thewar as a great rent and chasm, with its hither sideand its farther side and its deep abyss between, downinto which old things were dashed to death, and outof which new things were born into the better life.

Therefore, as we study the Kentucky fair of today,more than a quarter of a century later, we mustexpect to find it much changed. Withal it hasmany local variations. As it is held here and therein retired counties or by little neighborhoods it hascharacteristics of rural picturesqueness that suggestthe manners of the era passed away. But the typicalKentucky fair, the fair that represents the leadinginterests and advanced ideas of the day, bearstestimony enough to the altered life of the people.[162]

The old circular amphitheatre has been torndown, and replaced with a straight or a slightlycurved bank of seats. Thus we see the arena turnedinto the race-course, the idea of the Colosseum givingway to the idea of the Circus Maximus. Infront of the bank of seats stretch a small track forthe exhibition of different kinds of stock, and a largetrack for the races. This abandonment of the oldform of amphitheatre is thus a significant concessionto the trotting-horse, and a sign that its speed hasbecome the great pleasure of the fair.

As a picture, also, the fair of to-day lacks the Tyroleanbrightness of its predecessor; and as a socialevent it seems like a pensive tale of by-gone merriment.Society no longer looks upon it as the occasionof displaying its wealth, its toilets, its courtesies,its hospitalities. No such gay and splendid dressesnow; no such hundreds of dinner-tables on theshaded greensward. It would be too much to saythat the disappearance of the latter betokens theloss of that virtue which the gracious usages of aformer time made a byword. The explanation lieselsewhere. Under the old social regime a commonappurtenance to every well-established householdwas a trained force of negro servants. It was theservices of these that made the exercise of generouspublic entertainment possible to the Kentuckyhousewife. Moreover, the lavish ideals of the timethrew upon economy the reproach of meanness;[163]and, as has been noted, the fair was then the universallyrecognized time for the display of munificentcompetitive hospitalities. In truth, it was the sharpnessof the competition that brought in at last thegeneral disuse of the custom; for the dinners grewmore and more sumptuous, the labor of preparingthem more and more severe, and the expense ofpaying for them more and more burdensome. Soto-day the Kentuckians remain a hospitable people,[164]but you must not look to find the noblest exerciseof their hospitality at the fair. A few dinners youwill see, but modest luncheons are not despicableand the whole tendency of things is towards the understandingthat an appetite is an affair of the privateconscience. And this brings to light somestriking differences between the old and the newKentuckians. Along with the circular amphitheatre,the dresses, and the dinners, have gone the miscellaneousamusements of which the fair was ere-whilethe mongrel scene and centre. The idealfair of to-day frowns upon the side-show, and discardsevery floating accessory. It would be self-sufficient.It would say to the thousands of peoplewho still attend it as the greatest of all their organizedpleasures, "Find your excitement, your relaxation,your happiness, in a shed for machinery, a floralhall, and the fine stock." But of these the greatestattraction is the last, and of all kinds of stockthe one most honored is the horse. Here, then, wecome upon a noteworthy fact: the Kentucky fair,which began as a cattle-show, seems likely to endwith being a horse-show.

If anything is lacking to complete the contrastbetween the fair in the fulness of its developmentbefore the war and the fair of to-day, what bettercould be found to reflect this than the differentmorale of the crowd?

You are a stranger, and you have the impression[165][166][167]that an assemblage of ten, fifteen, twenty thousandKentuckians out on a holiday is pervaded by thespirit of a mob. You think that a few broken headsis one of its cherished traditions; that intoxicationand disorderliness are its dearest prerogatives. Butnowadays you look in vain for those heated, excitedmen with money lying between their fingers, whowere once the rebuke and the terror of the amphitheatre.You look in vain for heated, excited menof any kind: there are none. There is no drinking,no bullying, no elbowing, or shouldering, or swearing.

While still in their nurses' arms you may sometimessee the young Kentuckians shown in the ringat the horse-fair for premiums. From their earlyyears they are taken to the amphitheatre to enjoy itscolor, its fleetness, and its form. As little boys theyride for prizes. The horse is the subject of talk inthe hotels, on the street corners, in the saloons, atthe stables, on county court day, at the cross-roadsand blacksmiths' shops, in country church-yards beforethe sermon. The barber, as he shaves hismorning customer, gives him points on the races.There will be found many a group of gentlemen inwhose presence to reveal an ignorance of famoushorses and common pedigrees will bring a blush tothe cheek. Not to feel interested in such themes isto lay one's self open to a charge of disagreeable eccentricity.The horse has gradually emerged intoprominence until to-day it occupies the foreground.[168]
[169]

A HOME OF THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD

More than two hundred and fifty yearshave passed since the Cardinal de Richelieustood at the baptismal font as sponsorto a name that within the pale of theChurch was destined to become more famous thanhis own. But the world has wellnigh forgottenRichelieu's godson. Only the tireless student of biographynow turns the pages that record his extraordinarycareer, ponders the strange unfolding of hismoral nature, is moved by the deep pathos of his dyinghours. Dominique Armand-Jean le Bouthillierde Rancé! How cleverly, while scarcely out ofshort-clothes, did he puzzle the king's confessorwith questions on Homer, and at the age of thirteenpublish an edition of Anacreon! Of ancient, illustriousbirth, and heir to an almost ducal house, howtenderly favored was he by Marie de Médicis; happy-hearted,kindly, suasive, how idolized by a gorgeouscourt! In what affluence of rich laces did he dress;in what irresistible violet-colored close coats, withemeralds at his wristbands, a diamond on his finger,red heels on his shoes! How nimbly he caperedthrough the dance with a sword on his hip! How[172]bravely he planned quests after the manner ofknights of the Round Table, meaning to take forhimself the part of Lancelot! How exquisitely,ardently, and ah! how fatally he flirted with theincomparable ladies in the circle of Madame deRambouillet! And with a zest for sport as greatas his unction for the priestly office, how wittily—layingone hand on his heart and waving the otherthrough the air—could he bow and say, "Thismorning I preached like an angel; I'll hunt like thedevil this afternoon!"

All at once his life broke in two when half spent.He ceased to hunt like the devil, to adore the flesh,to scandalize the world; and retiring to the ancientAbbey of La Trappe in Normandy—the sponsorialgift of his Eminence and favored by many popes—thereundertook the difficult task of reforming therelaxed Benedictines. The old abbey—situated ina great fog-covered basin encompassed by densewoods of beech, oak, and linden, and thereforegloomy, unhealthy, and forbidding—was in ruins.One ascended by means of a ladder from floor torotting floor. The refectory had become a placewhere the monks assembled to play at bowls withworldlings. The dormitory, exposed to wind, rain,and snow, had been given up to owls. In thechurch the stones were scattered, the walls unsteady,the pavement was broken, the bell ready tofall. As a single solemn reminder of the vanished[173]spirit of the place, which had been founded by St.Stephen and St. Bernard in the twelfth century, withthe intention of reviving in the Western Church thebright examples of primitive sanctity furnished byEastern solitaries of the third and fourth, one readover the door of the cloister the words of Jeremiah:"Sedebit solitarius et tacebit" The few monks whoremained in the convent slept where they could, andwere, as Chateaubriand says, in a state of ruins.They preferred sipping ratafia to reading their breviaries;and when De Rancé undertook to enforcereform, they threatened to whip him for his pains.He, in turn, threatened them with the royal interference,and they submitted. There, accordingly, heintroduced a system of rules that a sybarite mighthave wept over even to hear recited; carried intopractice cenobitical austerities that recalled themodels of pious anchorites in Syria and Thebais;and gave its peculiar meaning to the word "Trappist,"a name which has since been taken by all Cisterciancommunities embracing the reform of thefirst monastery.

In the retirement of this mass of woods and sky DeRancé passed the rest of his long life, doing nothingmore worldly, so far as is now known, than quotingAristophanes and Horace to Bossuet, and allowinghimself to be entertained by Pellisson, exhibitingthe accomplishments of his educated spider. There,in acute agony of body and perfect meekness of[174]spirit, a worn and weary old man, with time enoughto remember his youthful ardors and emeralds andillusions, he watched his mortal end draw slowlynear. And there, asking to be buried in some desolatespot—some old battle-field—he died at last, extendinghis poor macerated body on the cross ofblessed cinders and straw, and commending his poorpenitent soul to the mercy of Heaven.

A wonderful spectacle to the less fervid Benedictinesof the closing seventeenth century must haveseemed the work of De Rancé in that old Normanabbey! A strange company of human souls, attractedby the former distinction of the great abbotas well as by the peculiar vows of the institute, musthave come together in its silent halls! One hearsmany stories, in the lighter vein, regarding some ofits inmates. Thus, there was a certain furious ex-trooper,lately reeking with blood, who got himselfmuch commended by living on baked apples; and ayoung nobleman who devoted himself to the workof washing daily the monastery spittoons. OneBrother, the story runs, having one day said therewas too much salt in his scalding-hot broth, immediatelyburst into tears of contrition for his wickednessin complaining; and another went for so many yearswithout raising his eyes that he knew not a newchapel had been built, and so quite cracked hisskull one day against the wall of it.

The abbey was an asylum for the poor and helpless,[175]the shipwrecked, the conscience-stricken, andthe broken-hearted—for that meditative type of fervidpiety which for ages has looked upon the cloisteras the true earthly paradise wherein to rear thedifficult edifice of the soul's salvation. Much nobleblood sought De Rancé's retreat to wash out its terrifyingstains, and more than one reckless spiritwent thither to take upon itself the yoke of purer,sweeter usages.

De Rancé's work remains an influence in theworld. His monastery and his reform constitutethe true background of material and spiritual factagainst which to outline the present Abbey of LaTrappe in Kentucky. Even when thus viewed, itseems placed where it is only by some freak of history.An abbey of La Trappe in Kentucky! Howinharmonious with every element of its environmentappears this fragment of old French monastic life!It is the twelfth century touching the last of thenineteenth—the Old World reappearing in the New.Here are French faces—here is the French tongue.Here is the identical white cowl presented to blessedSt. Alberick in the forests of Burgundy nine hundredyears ago. Here is the rule of St. Benedict,patriarch of the Western monks in the sixth century.When one is put out at the way-side station, amidwoodlands and fields of Indian-corn, and, leavingthe world behind him, turns his footsteps across thecountry towards the abbey, more than a mile away,[176]the seclusion of the region, its ineffable quietude,the infinite isolation of the life passed by the silentbrotherhood—all bring vividly before the mind theimage of that ancient distant abbey with which thisone holds connection so sacred and so close. Is itnot the veritable spot in Normandy? Here, too, isthe broad basin of retired country; here the denselywooded hills, shutting it in from the world; here theorchards and vineyards and gardens of the asceticdevotees; and, as the night falls from the low,blurred sky of gray, and cuts short a silent contemplationof the scene, here, too, one finds one's self,like some belated traveller in the dangerous forestsof old, hurrying on to reach the porter's lodge, andask within the sacred walls the hospitality of thevenerable abbot.

For nearly a century after the death of De Rancé it is known that hisfollowers faithfully maintained his reform at La Trappe. Then the FrenchRevolution drove the Trappists as wanderers into various countries, andthe abbey was made a foundery for cannon. A small branch of the ordercame in 1804 to the United States, and established itself for a while inPennsylvania, but soon turned its eyes towards the greater wilds andsolitudes of Kentucky.[177]For this there was reason. Kentucky was early a great pioneer of theCatholic Church in the United States. Here the first episcopal see ofthe West was erected, and Bardstown held spiritual jurisdiction, withincertain parallels of latitude, over all States and Territories betweenthe two oceans. Here, too, were the first Catholic missionaries of theWest, except those who were to be found in the French stations along theWabash and the Mississippi. Indeed, the Catholic population of Kentucky,which was principally descended from the colonists of Lord Baltimore,had begun to enter the State as early as 1775, the nucleus of theirsettlements soon becoming Nelson County, the locality of the presentabbey. Likewise it should be remembered that the Catholic Church in theUnited States, especially that portion of it in Kentucky, owes a greatdebt to the zeal of the exiled French clergy of early days. Thatbuoyancy and elasticity of the French character, which naturally adaptsit to every circumstance and emergency, was then most demanded and mostefficacious. From these exiles the infant missions of[178]the State were supplied with their most devoted laborers.

Hither, accordingly, the Trappists removed from Pennsylvania,establishing themselves on Pottinger's Creek, near Rohan's Knob, severalmiles from the present site. But they remained only a few years. Theclimate of Kentucky was ill suited to their life of unrelaxedasceticism; their restless superior had conceived a desire tochristianize Indian children, and so removed the languishing settlementto Missouri. There is not space for following the solemn march of thoseaustere exiles through the wildernesses of the New World. From Missourithey went to an ancient Indian burying-ground in Illinois, and therebuilt up a sort of village in the heart of the prairie; but the greatmortality from which they suffered, and the subsidence of the fury ofthe French Revolution recalled them in 1813 to France, to reoccupy theestablishments from which they had been banished.

This is a better place in which to state a miracle[179]than discuss it; and the following account of aheavenly portent, which is related to have beenvouchsafed the Trappists while sojourning in Kentucky,may be given without comment:

The present monastery, which is called the Abbeyof Gethsemane, owes its origin immediately to theAbbey of La Meilleraye, of the department of theLoire-Inférieure, France. The abbot of the latterhad concluded arrangements with the French Governmentto found a house in the island of Martinique,on an estate granted by Louis Philippe; butthis monarch's rule having been overturned, the planwas abandoned in favor of a colony in the UnitedStates. Two Fathers, with the view of selecting asite, came to New York in the summer of 1848,and naturally turned their eyes to the Catholicsettlements in Kentucky, and to the domain of thepioneer Trappists. In the autumn of that year,accordingly, about forty-five "religious" left themother-abbey of La Meilleraye, set sail from Havrede Grace for New Orleans, went thence by boat toLouisville, and from this point walked to Gethsemane,[180]a distance of some sixty miles. Although scatteredamong various countries of Europe, the Trappistshave but two convents in the United States—this,the oldest, and one near Dubuque, Iowa, acolony from the abbey in Ireland.

III

The domain of the abbey comprises some seventeenhundred acres of land, part of which is tillable,while the rest consists of a range of wooded knobsthat furnish timber to the monastery steam saw-mill.Around this domain lie the homesteads of Kentuckyfarmers, who make indifferent monks. One leavesthe public road that winds across the open countryand approaches the monastery through a long, levelavenue, enclosed on each side by a hedge-row ofcedars, and shaded by nearly a hundred beautifulEnglish elms, the offspring of a single parent stem.Traversing this dim, sweet spot, where no sound isheard but the waving of boughs and the softenednotes of birds, one reaches the porter's lodge, a low,brick building, on each side of which extends thehigh brick-wall that separates the inner from theouter world. Passing beneath the archway of thelodge, one discovers a graceful bit of landscape gardening—walksfringed with cedars, beds for flowers,[181]pathways so thickly strewn with sawdust that the heaviest footfall isunheard, a soft turf of green, disturbed only by the gentle shadows ofthe pious-looking Benedictine trees: a fit spot for recreation andmeditation. It is with a sort of worldly start that you come upon anenclosure at one end of these grounds wherein a populous family ofwhite-cowled rabbits trip around in the most noiseless fashion, andseemed ashamed of being caught living together in family relations.

Architecturally there is little to please the æstheticsense in the monastery building, along the wholefront of which these grounds extend. It is a greatquadrangular pile of brick, three stories high, heatedby furnaces and lighted by gas—modern appliances[182]which heighten the contrast with the ancient lifewhose needs they subserve. Within the quadrangleis a green inner court, also beautifully laid off. Onone side are two chapels, the one appropriated tothe ordinary services of the Church, and enteredfrom without the abbey-wall by all who desire; theother, consecrated to the offices of the Trappist order,entered only from within, and accessible exclusivelyto males. It is here that one finds occasion toremember the Trappist's vow of poverty. The vestmentsare far from rich, the decorations of the altarfar from splendid. The crucifixion-scene behind thealtar consists of wooden figures carved by one of themonks now dead, and painted with little art. Notender light of many hues here streams throughlong windows rich with holy reminiscence and artisticfancy. The church has, albeit, a certain beautyof its own—that charm which is inseparable fromfine proportion in stone and from gracefully disposedcolumns growing into the arches of the lofty roof.But the cold gray of the interior, severe and unrelieved,bespeaks a place where the soul comes to layitself in simplicity before the Eternal as it wouldupon a naked, solitary rock of the desert. Elsewherein the abbey greater evidences of votive povertyoccur—in the various statues and shrines of theVirgin, in the pictures and prints that hang in themain front corridor—in all that appertains to thematerial life of the community.[183]

Just outside the church, beneath the perpetualbenediction of the cross on its spire, is the quiet cemeterygarth, where the dead are side by side, theirgraves covered with myrtle and having each for itshead-stone a plain wooden crucifix bearing the religiousname and station of him who lies below—FatherHonorius, Father Timotheus, Brother Hilarius,Brother Eutropius. Who are they? And whence?And by what familiar names were they greeted onthe old play-grounds and battle-fields of the world?

The Trappists do not, as it is commonly understood,daily dig a portion of their own graves.When one of them dies and has been buried, a newgrave is begun beside the one just filled, as a reminderto the survivors that one of them must surely takehis place therein. So, too, when each seeks the cemeteryenclosure, in hours of holy meditation, and,standing bareheaded among the graves, prays softlyfor the souls of his departed brethren, he may comefor a time to this unfinished grave, and, kneeling, prayHeaven, if he be next, to dismiss his soul in peace.

Nor do they sleep in the dark, abject kennel, whichthe imagination, in the light of mediæval history, constructsas the true monk's cell. By the rule of St.Benedict, they sleep separate, but in the same dormitory—agreat upper room, well lighted and clean,in the body of which a general framework severalfeet high is divided into partitions that look likenarrow berths.[184]

We have acquired poetical and pictorial conceptionsof monks—praying with wan faces and upturnedeyes half darkened by the shadowing cowl,the coarse serge falling away from the emaciatedneck, the hands pressing the crucifix close to theheart; and with this type has been associated a certainidea of cloistral life—that it was an existence ofvacancy and idleness, or at best of deep meditationof the soul broken only by express spiritual devotions.There is another kind of monk, with themarks of which we seem traditionally familiar: themonk with the rubicund face, sleek poll, good epigastricdevelopment, and slightly unsteady gait, withwhom, in turn, we have connected a different phaseof conventual discipline—fat capon and stubblegoose, and midnight convivial chantings growingever more fast and furious, but finally dying awayin a heavy stertorous calm. Poetry, art, the drama,the novel, have each portrayed human nature in orders;the saint-like monk, the intellectual monk, thebibulous, the felonious, the fighting monk (who lovesnot the hermit of Copmanhurst?), until the memoryis stored and the imagination preoccupied.

Living for a while in a Trappist monastery in[185]modern America, one gets a pleasant actual experienceof other types no less picturesque and on thewhole much more acceptable. He finds himself, forone thing, brought face to face with the workingmonk. Idleness to the Trappist is the enemy of thesoul, and one of his vows is manual labor. Whatevera monk's previous station may have been, hemust perform, according to abbatial direction, themost menial services. None are exempt from work;there is no place among them for the sluggard.When it is borne in mind that the abbey is a self-dependentinstitution, where the healthy must bemaintained, the sick cared for, the dead buried, thenecessity for much work becomes manifest. In fact,the occupations are as various as those of a modernfactory. There is scope for intellects of all degreesand talents of wellnigh every order. Daily life, unremittinglyfrom year to year, is an exact system ofduties and hours. The building, covering about anacre of ground and penetrated by corridors, must bekept faultlessly clean. There are three kitchens—onefor the guests, one for the community, and onefor the infirmary—that require each acoquinariusand separate assistants. There is a tinker's shopand a pharmacy; a saddlery, where the broken gearused in cultivating the monastery lands is mended;a tailor's shop, where the worn garments are patched;a shoemaker's shop, where the coarse, heavy shoesof the monks are made and cobbled; and a barber's[186]shop, where the Trappist beard is shaved twice amonth and the Trappist head is monthly shorn.

Out-doors the occupations are even more varied.The community do not till the farm. The greaterpart of their land is occupied by tenant farmers, andwhat they reserve for their own use is cultivated bythe so-called "family brothers," who, it is due to say,have no families, but live as celibates on the abbeydomain, subject to the abbot's authority, without beingmembers of the order. The monks, however,do labor in the ample gardens, orchards, and vineyard,from which they derive their sustenance, in thesteam saw-mill and grain-mill, in the dairy and thecheese factory. Thus picturesquely engaged onemay find them in autumn: monks gathering applesand making pungent cider, which is stored away inthe vast cellar as their only beverage except water;monks repairing the shingle roof of a stable; monksfeeding the huge swine, which they fatten for theboard of their carnal guests, or the fluttering multitudeof chickens, from the eggs and young of whichthey derive a slender revenue; monks grouped inthe garden around a green and purple heap of turnips,to be stored up as a winter relish of no meandistinction.

Amid such scenes one forgets all else while enjoyingthe wealth and freshness of artistic effects.What a picture is this young Belgian cheese-maker,his sleeves rolled above the elbows of his brawny[187][188][189]arms, his great pinkish hands buried in the goldencurds, the cap of his serge cloak falling back andshowing his closely clipped golden-brown hair, blueeyes, and clear, delicate skin! Or this Australianex-farmer, as he stands by the hopper of grist or layson his shoulder a bag of flour for the coarse brown-breadof the monks. Or this dark old French operasinger, who strutted his brief hour on many a Europeanstage, but now hobbles around, hoary in hiscowl and blanched with age, to pick up a handful ofgarlic. Or this athletic young Irishman, thrustinga great iron prod into the glowing coals of the sawmillfurnace. Or this slender Switzer, your attendantin the refectory, with great keys dangling fromhis leathern cincture, who stands by with foldedhands and bowed head while you are eating the paganmeal he has prepared for you.

From various countries of the Old World menfind their way into the Abbey of Gethsemane, butamong them are no Americans. Repeatedly thelatter have joined the order, and have failed to persevereup to the final consecration of the white cowl.The fairest warning is given to the postulant. Heis made to understand the entire extent of the obligationhe has assumed; and only after passing througha novitiate, prolonged at the discretion of the abbot,is he admitted to the vows that must be kept unbrokentill death.[190]

From the striking material aspects of their dailylife, one is soon recalled to a sense of their subordinationto spiritual aims and pledges; for uponthem, like a spell of enchantment, lies the sacredsilence. The honey has been taken from the beeswith solemnity; the grapes have been gatheredwithout song and mirth. The vow of life-long silencetaken by the Trappist must of course not beconstrued literally; but there are only two occasionsduring which it is completely set aside—whenconfessing his sins and when singing the offices ofthe Church. At all other times his tongue becomes,as far as possible, a superfluous member; hespeaks only by permission of his superior, and alwayssimply and to the point. The monk at workwith another exchanges with him only the few low,necessary words, and those that provoke no laughter.Of the three so-called monastic graces,Simplicitas,Benignitas,Hilaritas, the last is not his.Even for necessary speech he is taught to substitutea language of signs, as fully systematized as thespeech of the deaf and dumb. Should he, while atwork, wound his fellow-workman, sorrow may be expressedby striking his breast. A desire to confess[191]is shown by lifting one hand to the mouth andstriking the breast with the other. The maker ofcheese crosses two fingers at the middle point tolet you know that it is made half of milk and halfof cream. The guest-master, whose business it isto act as your guide through the abbey and thegrounds, is warily mindful of his special functionsand requests you to address none but him. Onlythe abbot is free to speak when and as his judgmentmay approve. It is silence, says the Trappist,that shuts out new ideas, worldly topics, controversy.It is silence that enables the soul to contemplatewith singleness and mortification the infinite perfectionsof the Eternal.

In the abbey it is this pervasive hush that fallslike a leaden pall upon the stranger who has rushedin from the talking universe. Are these priestsmodern survivals of the rapt solitaries of India?The days pass, and the world, which seemed inhailing distance to you at first, has receded to dimremoteness. You stand at the window of yourroom looking out, and hear in the autumn treesonly the flute-like note of some migratory bird, passingslowly on towards the south. You listen within,and hear but a key turning in distant locks andthe slow-retreating footsteps of some dusky figurereturning to its lonely self-communings. The utmostprecaution is taken to avoid noise; in thedormitory not even your guide will speak to you,[192]but explains by gesture and signs. During theshort siesta the Trappists allow themselves, if oneof them, not wishing to sleep, gets permission toread in his so-called cell, he must turn the pages ofhis book inaudibly. In the refectory, while the mealis eaten and the appointed reader in the tribunegoes through a service, if one through carelessnessmakes a noise by so much as dropping a fork or aspoon, he leaves his seat and prostrates himself onthe floor until bidden by the superior to arise. Thesame penance is undergone in the church by anyone who should distract attention with the clasp ofhis book.

A hard life, to purely human seeming, does theTrappist make for the body. He thinks nothing ofit. It is his evil tenement of flesh, whose humorsare an impediment to sanctification, whose propensitiesare to be kept down by the practice of austerities.To it in part his monastic vows are addressed—perpetualand utter poverty, chastity, manual labor,silence, seclusion, penance, obedience. The perfectionsand glories of his monastic state culminate inthe complete abnegation and destruction of animalnature, and in the correspondence of his earthly lifewith the holiness of divine instruction. The war ofthe Jesuit is with the world; the war of the Trappistis with himself. From his narrow bed, onwhich are simply a coarse thin mattress, pillow,sheet, and coverlet, he rises at 2 o'clock, on certain[193]days at 1, on others yet at 12. He has not undressed,but has slept in his daily garb, with thecincture around his waist.

This dress consists, if he be a brother, of theroughest dark-brown serge-like stuff, the over-garmentof which is a long robe; if a Father, of a similarmaterial, but white in color, the over-garmentbeing the cowl, beneath which is the black scapular.He changes it only once in two weeks. The frequentuse of the bath, as tending to luxuriousness,is forbidden him, especially if he be young. Hisdiet is vegetables, fruit, honey, cider, cheese, andbrown-bread. Only when sick or infirm may hetake even fish or eggs. His table-service is pewter,plain earthenware, a heavy wooden spoon and forkof his own making, and the bottom of a broken bottlefor a salt-cellar. If he wears the white cowl, he eatsbut one such frugal repast a day during part of theyear; if the brown robe, and therefore required to domore work, he has besides this meal an early morningluncheon called "mixt." He renounces all claim tohis own person, all right over his own powers. "Iam as wax," he exclaims; "mould me as you will."By the law of his patron saint, if commanded to dothings too hard, or even impossible, he must stillundertake them.

For the least violations of the rules of his order;for committing a mistake while reciting a psalm,responsory, antiphon, or lesson; for giving out one[194]note instead of another, or sayingdominus insteadofdomino; for breaking or losing anything, or committingany fault while engaged in any kind of workin kitchen, pantry, bakery, garden, trade, or business—hemust humble himself and make public satisfactionforthwith. Nay, more: each by his vows isforced to become his brother's keeper, and to proclaimhim publicly in the community chapter for theslightest overt transgression. For charity's sake,however, he may not judge motives nor make vaguegeneral charges.

The Trappist does not walk beyond the enclosuresexcept by permission. He must repress ineffablytender yearnings that visit and vex the human heartin this life. The death of the nearest kindred isnot announced to him. Forgotten by the world, byhim it is forgotten. Yet not wholly. When helays the lashes of the scourge on his flesh—it maybe on his carious bones—he does it not for his ownsins alone, but for the sins of the whole world; andin his searching, self-imposed humiliations, there is asilent, broad out-reaching of sympathetic effort inbehalf of all his kind. Sorrow may not depict itselffreely on his face. If a suffering invalid, he mustmanifest no interest in the progress of his malady,feel no concern regarding the result. In his lasthour, he sees ashes strewn upon the floor in theform of a cross, a thin scattering of straw made overthem, and his body extended thereon to die; and[195]from this hard bed of death he knows it will beborne on a bier by his brethren and laid in thegrave without coffin or shroud.

But who can judge such a life save him who haslived it? Who can say what undreamt-of spiritualcompensations may not come even in this presenttime as a reward for bodily austerities? What finerealities may not body themselves forth to the eye ofthe soul, strained of grossness, steadied from worldlyagitation, and taught to gaze year after year into theawfulness and mystery of its own being and deepdestiny? "Monasticism," says Mr. Froude, "we believeto have been the realization of the infinite lovelinessand beauty of personal purity; and the saintin the desert was the apotheosis of the spiritualman." However this may be, here at Gethsemaneyou see one of the severest expressions of its faiththat the soul has ever given, either in ancient or inmodern times; and you cease to think of these menas members of a religious order, in the study ofthem as exponents of a common humanity strugglingwith the problem of its relation to the Infinite.One would wish to lay hold upon the latent elementsof power and truth and beauty in their system[196]which enables them to say with quiet cheerfulness,"We are happy, perfectly happy."

Excepting this ceaseless war between flesh andspirit, the abbey seems a peaceful place. Its relationswith the outside world have always been kindly.During the Civil War it was undisturbed bythe forces of each army. Food and shelter it hasnever denied even to the poorest, and it asks nocompensation, accepting such as the stranger maygive. The savor of good deeds extends beyond itswalls, and near by is a free school under its control,where for more than a quarter of a century boysof all creeds have been educated.

There comes some late autumnal afternoon whenyou are to leave the place. With a strange feelingof farewell, you grasp the hands of those whom youhave been given the privilege of knowing, and stepslowly out past the meek sacristan, past the noiselessgarden, past the porter's lodge and the misplacedrabbits, past the dim avenue of elms, past thegreat iron gate-way, and, walking along the sequesteredroad until you have reached the summit of awooded knoll half a mile away, turn and look back.Half a mile! The distance is infinite. The lastrays of the sun seem hardly able to reach the palecross on the spire which anon fades into the sky;and the monastery bell, that sends its mellow tonesacross the shadowy landscape, is rung from an immemorialpast.[197]

It is the hour of theCompline, theSalve, and theAngelus—the last of the seven services that theTrappist holds between 2 o'clock in the morningand this hour of early nightfall. Standing alone inthe silent darkness you allow imagination to carryyou once more into the church. You sit in one ofthe galleries and look down upon the stalls of themonks ranged along the walls of the nave. Thereis no light except the feeble gleam of a single lowred cresset that swings ever-burning before the altar.You can just discern a long line of nameless duskyfigures creep forth from the deeper gloom and glidenoiselessly into their seats. You listen to thecantus[198]plenus gravitate—those long, level notes with sorrowfulcadences and measured pauses, sung by a full, unfalteringchorus of voices, old and young. It is thesong that smote the heart of Bossuet with such sadnessin the desert of Normandy two and a half centuriesago.

Anon by some unseen hand two tall candles arelighted on the altar. The singing is hushed. Fromthe ghostly line of white-robed Fathers a shadowyfigure suddenly moves towards the spot in the middleof the church where the bell-rope hangs, andwith slow, weird movements rings the solemn belluntil it fills the cold, gray arches with quiveringsound. One will not in a lifetime forget the impressivenessof the scene—the long tapering shadowsthat stretch out over the dimly lighted, polished floorfrom this figure silhouetted against the brighter lightfrom the altar beyond; the bowed, moveless formsof the monks in brown almost indiscernible in thegloom; the spectral glamour reflected from therobes of the bowed Fathers in white; the ghastly,suffering scene of the Saviour, strangely luminousin the glare of the tall candles. It is the dailyclimax in the devotions of the Old World monks atGethsemane.[199]

HOMESTEADS OF THE BLUE-GRASS

Kentucky is a land of rural homes. Thepeople are out in the country with a perennialappetite and passion for the soil.Like Englishmen, they are by nature nodwellers in cities; like older Saxon forefathers, theyhave a strong feeling for a habitation even no betterthan a one-story log-house, with furniture of therudest kind, and cooking in the open air, if, only, itbe surrounded by a plot of ground and individualizedby all-encompassing fences. They are gregariousat respectful distances, dear to them being thatsense of personal worth and importance which comesfrom territorial aloofness, from domestic privacy,from a certain lordship over all they survey.

The land they hold has a singular charm andpower of infusing fierce, tender desire of ownership.Centuries before it was possessed by them, all ruthlessaboriginal wars for its sole occupancy had resolvedthemselves into the final understanding thatit be wholly claimed by none. Bounty in land wasthe coveted reward of Virginia troops in the oldFrench and Indian war. Hereditary love of landdrew the earliest settlers across the perilous mountains.[202]Rapacity for land caused them to rush downinto the green plains, fall upon the natives, slay, torture,hack to pieces, and sacrifice wife and child,with the swift, barbaric hardihood and unappeasablefury of Northmen of old descending upon the softershores of France. Acquisition of land was the determinativeprinciple of the new civilization. Litigationconcerning land has made famous the decisionsof their courts of law. The surveyor's chainshould be wrapped about the rifle as a symbolic epitomeof pioneer history. It was for land that theyturned from the Indians upon one another, andwrangled, cheated, and lied. They robbed Booneuntil he had none left in which to lay his bones.One of the first acts of one of the first colonists wasto glut his appetite by the purchase of all of theState that lies south of the Kentucky River. Themiddle class land-owner has always been the controllingelement of population. To-day more of thepeople are engaged in agriculture than in all otherpursuits combined; taste for it has steadily drawn arich stream of younger generations hither and thitherinto the younger West; and to-day, as always, thebroad, average ideal of a happy life is expressed inthe quiet holding of perpetual pastures.

Steam, said Emerson, is almost an Englishman;grass is almost a Kentuckian. Wealth, labor, productions,revenues, public markets, public improvements,manners, characters, social modes—all speak[203]in common of the country, and fix attention uponthe soil. The staples attest the predominance ofagriculture; unsurpassed breeds of stock imply theverdure of the woodlands; turnpikes, the finest onthe continent, furnish viaducts for the garneredriches of the earth, and prove the high developmentof rural life, the every-day luxury of delightful ridingand driving. Even the crow, the most boldly characteristicfreebooter of the air, whose cawing is oftenthe only sound heard in dead February days, orwhose flight amid his multitudinous fellows formslong black lines across the morning and the eveningsky, tells of fat pickings and profitable thefts in innumerablefields. In Kentucky a rustic youngwoman of Homeric sensibility might be allowed todiscover in the slow-moving panorama of whiteclouds her father's herd of short-horned cattle grazingthrough heavenly pastures, and her lover to seein the halo around the moon a perfect celestial racetrack.

Comparatively weak and unpronounced are thefeatures of urban life. The many little towns andvillages scattered at easy distances over the Statefor the most part draw out a thin existence by reasonof surrounding rural populations. They bearthe pastoral stamp. Up to their very environs approachthe cultivated fields, the meadows of brilliantgreen, the delicate woodlands; in and out along thewhite highways move the tranquil currents of rural[204]trade; through their streets groan and creak theloaded wagons; on the sidewalks the most conspicuoushuman type is the owner of the soil. Once amonth county-seats overflow with the incoming tideof country folk, livery-stables are crowded with horsesand vehicles, court-house squares become marketplacesfor traffic in stock. But when emptied ofcountry folk, they sink again into repose, all butfalling asleep of summer noonings, and in winterseeming frost-locked with the outlying woods andstreams.

Remarkable is the absence of considerable cities,there being but one that may be said truly to reflectKentucky life, and that situated on the river frontier,a hundred miles from the centre of the State.Think of it! A population of some two millions withonly one interior town that contains over five thousandwhite inhabitants. Hence Kentucky makes noimpression abroad by reason of its urban population.Lexington, Bowling Green, Harrodsburg, Winchester,Richmond, Frankfort, Mount Sterling, and allthe others, where do they stand in the scale ofAmerican cities? Hence, too, the disparaging contrastliable to be drawn between Kentucky and thegigantic young States of the West. Where is themagnitude of the commonwealth, where the groundof the sense of importance in the people? No hugemills and gleaming forges, no din of factories andthrob of mines, nowhere any colossal centres for[205]rushing, multiform American energy. The answermust be: Judge the State thus far as an agriculturalState; the people as an agricultural people. Intime no doubt the rest will come. All other thingsare here, awaiting occasion and development. Theeastern portions of the State now verge upon an eraof long-delayed activity. There lie the mines, thebuilding-stone, the illimitable wealth of timbers; theresoon will be opened new fields for commercial andindustrial centralization. But hitherto in Kentuckyit has seemed enough that the pulse of life shouldbeat with the heart of nature, and be in unison withthe slow unfolding and decadence of the seasons.The farmer can go no faster than the sun, and isrich or poor by the law of planetary orbits. In allcentral Kentucky not a single village of note hasbeen founded within three-quarters of a century,and some villages a hundred years old have notsucceeded in gaining even from this fecund racemore than a thousand or two thousand inhabitants.But these little towns are inaccessible to the criticismthat would assault their commercial greatness.Business is not their boast. Sounded to its depths,the serene sea in which their existence floats will reveala bottom, not of mercantile, but of social ideas;studied as to cost or comfort, the architecture inwhich the people have expressed themselves will appearnoticeable, not in their business houses andpublic buildings, but in their homes. If these towns[206]pique themselves pointedly on anything, it is thatthey are the centres of genial intercourse and politeentertainment. Even commercial Louisville mustfind its peculiar distinction in the number of itssumptuous private residences. It is wellnigh a rulethat in Kentucky the value of the house is out ofproportion to the value of the estate.

But if the towns regard themselves as the provincialfortresses of good society, they do not look downupon the home life of the country. Between countryand town in Kentucky exists a relation uniqueand well to be studied: such a part of the populationof the town owning or managing estates in thecountry; such a part of the population of the countrybeing business or professional men in town. For it isstrikingly true that here all vocations and avocationsof life may and do go with tillage, and there are noneit is not considered to adorn. The first Governor ofthe State was awarded his domain for raising a cropof corn, and laid down public life at last to renew hiscompanionship with the plough. "I retire," said Clay,many years afterwards, "to the shades of Ashland."The present Governor (1888), a man of large wealth,lives, when at home, in a rural log-house built nearthe beginning of the century. His predecessor inoffice was a farmer. Hardly a man of note in allthe past or present history of the State but has hadhis near or immediate origin in the woods and fields.Formerly it was the custom—less general now—that[207]young men should take their academic degreesin the colleges of the United States, sometimes inthose of Europe, and, returning home, hang up theirdiplomas as votive offerings to the god of boundaries.To-day you will find the ex-minister to a foreigncourt spending his final years in the solitude of hisfarm-house, and the representative at Washingtonmaking his retreat to the restful homestead. Thebanker in town bethinks him of stocks at home thatknow no panic; the clergyman studies St. Paul amidthe native corn, and muses on the surpassing beautyof David as he rides his favorite horse through greenpastures and beside still waters.

Hence, to be a farmer here implies no social inferiority,no rusticity, no boorishness. Hence, soclearly interlaced are urban and rural society thatthere results a homogeneousness of manners, customs,dress, entertainments, ideals, and tastes.Hence, the infiltration of the country with the bestthe towns contain. More, indeed, than this: ratherto the country than to the towns in Kentucky mustone look for the local history of the home life.There first was implanted under English and Virginianinfluences the antique style of country-seat;there flourished for a time gracious manners thatwere the high-born endowment of the olden school;there in piquant contrast were developed side byside the democratic and aristocratic spirits, workingseverally towards equality and caste; there was[208]established the State reputation for effusive privatehospitalities; and there still are peculiarly cherishedthe fading traditions of more festive boards andkindlier hearthstones. If the feeling of the wholepeople could be interpreted by a single saying, itwould perhaps be this: that whether in town orcountry—and if in the country, not remotely hereor there, but in wellnigh unbroken succession fromestate to estate—they have attained a notable stagein the civilization of the home. This is the commonconviction, this the idol of the tribe. The idol itselfmay rest on the fact of provincial isolation, which isthe fortress of self-love and neighborly devotion; butit suffices for the present purpose to say that it isan idol still, worshipped for the divinity it is thoughtto enshrine. Hence you may assail the Kentuckianon many grounds, and he will hold his peace. Youmay tell him that he has no great cities, that he doesnot run with the currents of national progress; butnever tell him that the home life of his fellows andhimself is not as good as the best in the land. Domesticityis the State porcupine, presenting anangry quill to every point of attack. To write ofhomes in Kentucky, therefore, and particularly ofrural homes, is to enter the very citadel of the popularaffections.[209]

At first they built for the tribe, working togetherlike beavers in common cause against nature andtheir enemies. Home life and domestic architecturebegan among them with the wooden-fort community,the idea of which was no doubt derived from thefrontier defences of Virginia, and modified by theKentuckians with a view to domestic use. Thisbuilding habit culminated in the erection of sometwo hundred rustic castles, the sites of which insome instances have been identified. It was a singularlyfit sort of structure, adjusting itself desperatelyand economically to the necessities of environment.For the time society lapsed into a statewhich, but for the want of lords and retainers, wasfeudalism of the rudest kind. There were gates forsally and swift retreat, bastions for defence, andloop-holes in cabin walls for deadly volleys. Therewere hunting-parties winding forth stealthily withouthorn or hound, and returning with game that wouldhave graced the great feudal halls. There was siege,too, and suffering, and death enough, God knows,mingled with the lowing of cattle and the clatter oflooms. Some morning, even, you might have seena slight girl trip covertly out to the little cottonpatch[210]in one corner of the enclosure, and, blushingcrimson over the snowy cotton-bolls, pick the wherewithalto spin her bridal dress; for in these fortsthey married also and bore children. Many a Kentuckyfamily must trace its origin through the tribalcommunities pent up within a stockade, and discoverthat the family plate consisted then of a tincup, and, haply, an iron fork.

But, as soon as might be, this compulsory villagelife broke eagerly asunder into private homes. Thecommon building form was that of the log-house. Itis needful to distinguish this from the log-house ofthe mountaineer, which is found throughout easternKentucky to-day. Encompassed by all difficulties,the pioneer yet reared himself a better, more enduringhabitation. One of these, still intact afterthe lapse of more than a century, stands as a singularlyinteresting type of its kind, and brings usface to face with primitive architecture. "MulberryHill," a double house, two and a half stories high,with a central hall, was built in Jefferson County,near Louisville, in 1785, for John Clark, the fatherof General George Rogers Clark.

The settlers made the mistake of supposing thatthe country lacked building-stone, so deep under theloam and verdure lay the whole foundation rock;but soon they discovered that their better houseshad only to be taken from beneath their feet. Thefirst stone house in the State, and withal the most[211]notable, is "Traveller's Rest," in Lincoln County,built in 1783 by Governor Metcalf, who was then astone-mason, for Isaac Shelby, the first Governor ofKentucky. To those who know the blue-grass landscape,this type of homestead is familiar enough,with its solidity of foundation, great thickness ofwalls, enormous, low chimneys, and little windows.The owners were the architects and builders, andwith stern, necessitous industry translated their conditioninto their work, giving it an intensely humanelement. It harmonized with need, not with feeling;was built by the virtues, and not by the vanities.With no fine balance of proportion, with details few,scant, and crude, the entire effect of the architecturewas not unpleasing, so honest was its poverty, so ruggedand robust its purpose. It was the gravest ofall historic commentaries written in stone. Variedfate has overtaken these old-time structures. Manyhave been torn down, yielding their well-chosen sitesto newer, showier houses. Others became in timethe quarters of the slaves. Others still have beenhidden away beneath weather-boarding—a veneer ofcommonplace modernism—as though whitewashedor painted plank were finer than roughhewn gray-stone.But one is glad to discover that in numerousinstances they are the preferred homes of those whohave taste for the old in native history, and pride infamily associations and traditions. On the thinned,open landscape nothing stands out with a more[212]pathetic air of nakedness than one of these stonehouses, long since abandoned and fallen into ruin.Under the Kentucky sky houses crumble and diewithout seeming to grow old, without an aged toningdown of colors, without the tender memorials ofmosses and lichens, and of the whole race of clingingthings. So not until they are quite overthrowndoes Nature reclaim them, or draw once more to herbosom the walls and chimneys within whose faithfulbulwarks, and by whose cavernous, glowing recesses,our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathersdanced and made love, married, suffered, and fellasleep.

Neither to the house of logs, therefore, nor tothat of stone must we look for the earliest embodimentof positive taste in domestic architecture.This found its first, and, considering the exigenciesof the period, its most noteworthy expression in thehomestead of brick. No finer specimen survivesthan that built in 1796, on a plan furnished byThomas Jefferson to John Brown, who had been hislaw student, remained always his honored friend,and became one of the founders of the commonwealth.It is a rich landmark, this old manor-placeon the bank of the Kentucky River, in Frankfort.The great hall with its pillared archway is wideenough for dancing the Virginia reel. The suitesof high, spacious rooms; the carefully carved wood-workof the window-casings and the doors; the tall,[213]quaint mantel-frames; the deep fireplaces with theirshining fire-dogs and fenders of brass, brought laboriouslyenough on pack-mules from Philadelphia; thebrass locks and keys; the portraits on the walls—allthese bespeak the early implantation in Kentuckyof a taste for sumptuous life and entertainment.The house is like a far-descending echo of colonialOld Virginia.

Famous in its day—for it is already beneath thesod—and built not of wood, nor of stone, nor ofbrick, but in part of all, was "Chaumière," the homeof David Meade during the closing years of the last,and the early years of the present, century. Theowner, a Virginian who had been much in England,brought back with him notions of the baronial styleof country-seat, and in Jessamine County, some tenmiles from Lexington, built a home that lingers inthe mind like some picture of the imagination. Itwas a villa-like place, a cluster of rustic cottages,with a great park laid out in the style of Old Worldlandscape-gardening. There were artificial riversspanned by bridges, and lakes with islands crownedby temples. There were terraces and retired alcoves,and winding ways cut through floweringthickets. A fortune was spent on the grounds; aretinue of servants was employed in nurturing theirbeauty. The dining-room, wainscoted with walnutand relieved by deep window-seats, was rich withthe family service of silver and glass; on the walls[214]of other rooms hung family portraits by ThomasHudson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two days in theweek were appointed for formal receptions. ThereJackson and Monroe and Taylor were entertained;there Aaron Burr was held for a time under arrest;there the old school showed itself in buckles andknee-breeches, and rode abroad in a yellow chariotwith outriders in blue cloth and silver buttons.

Near Lexington may be found a further notableexample of early architecture in the Todd homestead,the oldest house in the region, built by thebrother of John Todd, who was Governor of KentuckyTerritory, including Illinois. It is a strong,spacious brick structure reared on a high foundationof stone, with a large, square hall and square roomsin suites, connected by double doors. To the lastcentury also belongs the low, irregular pile that becamethe Wickliffe, and later the Preston, house inLexington—a striking example of the taste thenprevalent for plain, or even commonplace, exteriors,if combined with interiors that touched the imaginationwith the suggestion of something stately andnoble and courtly.

These are a few types of homes erected in thelast century. The wonder is not that such placesexist, but that they should have been found in Kentuckyat such a time. For society had begun asthe purest of democracies. Only a little while agothe people had been shut up within a stockade.[215]Stress of peril and hardship had levelled the elementsof population to more than a democracy: ithad knit them together as one endangered humanbrotherhood. Hence the sudden, fierce flaring upof sympathy with the French Revolution; hencethe deep re-echoing war-cry of Jacobin emissaries.But scarcely had the wave of primitive conquestflowed over the land, and wealth followed in itspeaceful wake, before life fell apart into the extremesof social caste. The memories of former position,the influences of old domestic habits were powerfulstill; so that, before a generation passed, Kentuckysociety gave proof of the continuity of its developmentfrom Virginia. The region of the James River,so rich in antique homesteads, began to renewitself in the region of the blue-grass. On a newand larger canvas began to be painted the pictureof shaded lawns, wide portals, broad staircases, greathalls, drawing-rooms, and dining-rooms, wainscoting,carved wood-work, and waxed hard-wood floors.In came a few yellow chariots, morocco-lined anddrawn by four horses. In came the powder, thewigs, and the queues, the ruffled shirts, the knee-breeches,the glittering buckles, the high-heeled slippers,and the frosty brocades. Over the Alleghanies,in slow-moving wagons, came the massive mahoganyfurniture, the sunny brasswork, the tall silvercandlesticks, the nervous-looking, thin legged littlepianos. In came old manners and old speech and[216]old prides: the very Past gathered together itshousehold gods and made an exodus into the Future.

Without due regard to these essential facts thesocial system of the State must ever remain poorlyunderstood. Hitherto they have been but little considered.To the popular imagination the most familiartype of the early Kentuckian is that of thefighter, the hunter, the rude, heroic pioneer and hisno less heroic wife: people who left all things behindthem and set their faces westward, prepared to benew creatures if such they could become. But onthe dim historic background are the stiff figures ofanother type, people who were equally bent on beingold-fashioned creatures if such they could remain.Thus, during the final years of the last century andthe first quarter of the present one, Kentucky lifewas richly overlaid with ancestral models. Closelystudied, the elements of population by the close ofthis period somewhat resembled a landed gentry,a robust yeomanry, a white tenantry, and a blackpeasantry. It was only by degrees—by the dying outof the fine old types of men and women, by longerabsence from the old environment and closer contactwith the new—that society lost its inherited and acquiredits native characteristics, or became less Virginianand more Kentuckian. Gradually, also, thewhite tenantry waned and the black peasantry waxed.The aristocratic spirit, in becoming more Kentuckian,unbent somewhat its pride, and the democratic,[217]in becoming more Kentuckian, took on a pride ofits own; so that when social life culminated with thefirst half-century, there had been produced over theBlue-grass Region, by the intermingling of the two,that widely diffused and peculiar type which may bedescribed as an aristocratic democracy, or a democraticaristocracy, according to one's choosing of aphrase. The beginnings of Kentucky life representednot simply a slow development from therudest pioneer conditions, but also a direct and immediateimplantation of the best of long-establishedsocial forms. And in nowise did the latter embodyitself more persuasively and lastingly than in thebuilding of costly homes.

III

With the opening of the present century, thattaste had gone on developing. A specimen of earlyarchitecture in the style of the old English mansionis to be found in "Locust Grove," a massive and enduringstructure—not in the Blue-grass Region, it istrue, but several miles from Louisville—built in1800 for Colonel Croghan, brother-in-law of Gen.George Rogers Clark; and still another remains in"Spring Hill," in Woodford County, the home ofNathaniel Hart, who had been a boy in the fort at[218]Boonesborough. Until recently a further representative,though remodelled in later times, survived inthe Thompson place at "Shawnee Springs," in MercerCounty.

Consider briefly the import of such country homesas these—"Traveller's Rest," "Chaumière," "SpringHill," and "Shawnee Springs." Built remotely hereand there, away from the villages or before villageswere formed, in a country not yet traversed by limestonehighways or even by lanes, they, and such asthey, were the beacon-lights, many-windowed andkind, of Kentucky entertainment. "Traveller'sRest" was on the great line of emigration from Abingdonthrough Cumberland Gap. Its roof-tree wasa boon of universal shelter, its very name a perpetualinvitation to all the weary. Long after the countrybecame thickly peopled it, and such places as it, remainedthe rallying-points of social festivity in theirseveral counties, or drew their guests from remoterregions. They brought in the era of hospitalities,which by-and-by spread through the towns and overthe land. If one is ever to study this trait as itflowered to perfection in Kentucky life, one must lookfor it in the society of some fifty years ago. Thenhorses were kept in the stables, servants were keptin the halls. Guests came uninvited, unannounced;tables were regularly set for surprises. "Put aplate," said an old Kentuckian of the time with alarge family connection—"always put a plate for the[219]last one of them down to the youngest grandchild."What a Kentuckian would have thought of beingasked to come on the thirteenth of the month andto leave on the twentieth, it is difficult to imagine.The wedding-presents of brides were not only jewelsand silver and gold, but a round of balls. The peoplewere laughed at for their too impetuous civilities.In whatever quarter of the globe they should happento meet for the hour a pleasing stranger, theywould say in parting, "And when you come to Kentucky,be certain to come to my house."

Yet it is needful to discriminate, in speaking ofKentucky hospitality. Universally gracious towardsthe stranger, and quick to receive him for his individualworth, within the State hospitality ran in circles,and the people turned a piercing eye on oneanother's social positions. If in no other materialaspect did they embody the history of descent sosturdily as in the building of homes, in no othertrait of home life did they reflect this more clearlythan in family pride. Hardly a little town but hadits classes that never mingled; scarce a rural neighborhoodbut insisted on the sanctity of its salt-cellarand the gloss of its mahogany. The spirit of castewas somewhat Persian in its gravity. Now theAlleghanies were its background, and the heroicbeginnings of Kentucky life supplied its warrant;now it overleaped the Alleghanies, and allied itselfto the memories of deeds and names in older States.[220]But if some professed to look down, none professedto look up. Deference to an upper class, if deferenceexisted, was secret and resentful, not open andservile. The history of great political contests inthe State is largely the victory and defeat of socialtypes. Herein lies a difficulty: you touch any pointof Kentucky life, and instantly about it cluster antagonismsand contradictions. The false is true;the true is false. Society was aristocratic; it wasdemocratic; it was neither; it was both. Therewas intense family pride, and no family pride. Theancestral sentiment was weak, and it was strong.To-day you will discover the increasing vogue of anheraldica Kentuckiensis, and to-day an absolute disregardof a distinguished past. One tells but partialtruths.

Of domestic architecture in a brief and generalway something has been said. The prevailing influencewas Virginian, but in Lexington and elsewheremay be observed evidences of French ideas inthe glasswork and designs of doors and windows, inrooms grouped around a central hall with archingniches and alcoves; for models made their way fromNew Orleans as well as from the East. Out in thecountry, however, at such places as those alreadymentioned, and in homes nearer town, as at Ashland,a purely English taste was sometimes shownfor woodland parks with deer, and, what was morepeculiarly Kentuckian, elk and buffalo. This taste,[221]once so conspicuous, has never become extinct, andcertainly the landscape is receptive enough to allsuch stately purposes. At "Spring Hill" and elsewhere,to-day, one may stroll through woods thathave kept a touch of their native wildness. Therewas the English love of lawns, too, with a low mattedgreen turf and wide-spreading shade-trees above—elmand maple, locust and poplar—the English fondnessfor a home half hidden with evergreens andcreepers and shrubbery, to be approached by a leafyavenue, a secluded gate-way, and a gravelled drive;for highways hardly admit to the heart of rural lifein Kentucky, and way-side homes, to be dusted andgazed at by every passer-by, would little accord withthe spirit of the people. This feeling of family seclusionand completeness also portrayed itself verytenderly in the custom of family graveyards, whichwere in time to be replaced by the democratic cemetery;and no one has ever lingered around thosequiet spots of aged and drooping cedars, fast-fadingviolets, and perennial myrtle, without being made tofeel that they grew out of the better heart and fosteredthe finer senses.

Another evidence of culture among the first generationsof Kentuckians is to be seen in the privatecollections of portraits, among which one wandersnow with a sort of stricken feeling that the higherlife of Kentucky in this regard never went beyondits early promise. Look into the meagre history[222]of native art, and you will discover that nearly allthe best work belongs to this early time. It waspossible then that a Kentuckian could give up lawand turn to painting. Almost in the wildernessJouett created rich, luminous, startling canvases.Artists came from older States to sojourn and towork, and were invited or summoned from abroad.Painting was taught in Lexington in 1800. Wellfor Jouett, perhaps, that he lived when he did; betterfor Hart, perhaps, that he was not born later:they might have run for Congress. One is proneto recur time and again to this period, when theideals of Kentucky life were still wavering or unformed,and when there was the greatest receptivityto outside impressions. Thinking of social life as itwas developed, say in and around Lexington—ofartists coming and going, of the statesmen, thelecturers, the lawyers, of the dignity and the energyof character, of the intellectual dinners—one is inclinedto liken the local civilization to a truncatedcone, to a thing that should have towered to a symmetricapex, but somehow has never risen very highabove a sturdy base.

But to speak broadly of home life after it becamemore typically Kentuckian, and after architecturebegan to reflect with greater uniformity the characterof the people. And here one can find materialcomfort, if not æsthetic delight; for it is the wholepicture of human life in the Blue-grass Region that[223]pleases. Ride east and west, or north and south,along highway or by-way, and the picture is thesame. One almost asks for relief from the monotonyof a merely well-to-do existence, almost sighs forthe extremes of squalor and splendor, that nowheremay be seen, and that would seem so out of place ifanywhere confronted. On, and on, and on you go,seeing only the repetition of field and meadow, woodand lawn, a winding stream, an artificial pond, a sunnyvineyard, a blooming orchard, a stone-wall, ahedge-row, a tobacco barn, a warehouse, a race-track,cattle under the trees, sheep on the slopes, swine inthe pools, and, half hidden by evergreens and shrubbery,the homelike, unpretentious houses that crownvery simply and naturally the entire picture of materialprosperity. They strike you as built not fortheir own sakes. Few will offer anything that layshold upon the memory, unless it be perhaps a frontportico with Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian columns;for the typical Kentuckian likes to go into his housethrough a classic entrance, no matter what inharmoniousthings may be beyond; and after supperon summer evenings nothing fills him with serenercomfort than to tilt his chair back against a classicsupport, as he smokes a pipe and argues on the immortalityof a pedigree.

On the whole, one feels that nature has long waitedfor a more exquisite sense in domestic architecture;that the immeasurable possibilities of delightful[224]landscape have gone unrecognized or wasted. Toooften there is in form and outline no harmony withthe spirit of the scenery, and there is dissonance ofcolor—color which makes the first and strongestimpression. The realm of taste is prevailingly therealm of the want of taste, or of its meretricious andcommonplace violations. Many of the houses havea sort of featureless, cold, insipid ugliness, and interiorand exterior decorations are apt to go for nothingor for something worse. You repeat that natureawaits more art, since she made the land so kind tobeauty; for no transformation of a rude, ungeniallandscape is needed. The earth does not require tobe trimmed and combed and perfumed. The airyvistas and delicate slopes are ready-made, the park-likewoodlands invite, the tender, clinging childrenof the summer, the deep, echoless repose of the wholeland, all ask that art be laid on every undulation andstored in every nook. And there are days with suchArcadian colors in air and cloud and sky—days withsuch panoramas of calm, sweet pastoral groups andharmonies below, such rippling and flashing of watersthrough green underlights and golden interspaces,that the shy, coy spirit of beauty seems to bewandering half sadly abroad and shunning all thehaunts of man.

But little agricultural towns are not art-centres.Of itself rural life does not develop æsthetic perceptions,and the last, most difficult thing to bring into[225]the house is this shy, elusive spirit of beauty. TheKentucky woman has perhaps been corrupted inchildhood by tasteless surroundings. Her lovablemission, the creation of a multitude of small, lovelyobjects, is undertaken feebly and blindly. She maynot know how to create beauty, may not know whatbeauty is. The temperament of her lord, too, ispractical: a man of substance and stomach, soundat heart, and with an abiding sense of his own responsibilityand importance, honestly insisting onsweet butter and new-laid eggs, home-made breadand home-grown mutton, but little revelling in thedelicacies of sensibility, and with no more eye forcrimson poppies or blue corn-flowers in his housethan amid his grain. Many a Kentucky womanwould make her home beautiful if her husbandwould allow her to do it.

Amid a rural people, also, no class of citizensis more influential than the clergy, who go aboutas the shepherds of the right; and without doubtin Kentucky, as elsewhere, ministerial ideals havewrought their effects on taste in architecture. Perhapsit is well to state that this is said broadly, andparticularly of the past. The Kentucky preachersduring earlier times were a fiery, zealous, and austereset, proclaiming that this world was not ahome, but wilderness of sin, and exhorting theirpeople to live under the awful shadow of Eternity.Beauty in every material form was a peril, the[226]seductive garment of the devil. Wellnigh all thatmade for æsthetic culture was put down, and, likefrost on venturesome flowers, sermons fell on beautyin dress, entertainment, equipage, houses, churcharchitecture, music, the drama, the opera—everything.The meek young spirit was led to the creekor pond, and perhaps the ice was broken for herbaptism. If, as she sat in the pew, any vision of herchaste loveliness reached the pulpit, back came thewarning that she would some day turn into awithered hag, and must inevitably be "eaten ofworms." What wonder if the sense of beauty pinedor went astray, and found itself completely avengedin the building of such churches? And yet thereis nothing that even religion more surely demandsthan the fostering of the sense of beauty within us,and through this also we work towards the civilizationof the future.

Many rural homes have been built since the war,but the old type of country life has vanished. Onthe whole, there has been a strong movement ofpopulation towards the towns, rapidly augmentingtheir size. Elements of showiness and freshnesshave been added to their once unobtrusive architecture.[227]And, in particular, that art movement andsudden quickening of the love of beauty which sweptover this country a few years since has had its influencehere. But for the most part the newerhomes are like the newer homes in other Americancities, and the style of interior appointment and decorationhas few native characteristics. As a rulethe people love the country life less than of yore,since an altered social system has deprived it ofmuch leisure, and has added hardships. The Kentuckiandoes not regard it as part of his mission inlife to feed fodder to stock; and servants are hardto get, the colored ladies and gentlemen having developeda taste for urban society.

What is to be the future of the Blue-grass Region?When population becomes denser and the pressureis felt in every neighborhood, who will possess it?One seems to see in certain tendencies of Americanlife the probable answer to this question. The smallfarmer will be bought out, and will disappear. Estateswill grow fewer and larger. The whole land willpass into the hands of the rich, being too preciousfor the poor to own. Already here and there onenotes the disposition to create vast domains by theslow swallowing up of contiguous small ones. Considerin this connection the taste already shown bythe rich American in certain parts of the UnitedStates to found a country-place in the style of anEnglish lord. Consider, too, that the landscape is[228]much like the loveliest of rural England; that thetrees, the grass, the sculpture of the scenery aresuch as make the perfect beauty of a park; that thefox, the bob-white, the thoroughbred, and the deerare indigenous. Apparently, therefore, one can foreseethe distant time when this will become the regionof splendid homes and estates that will nourisha taste for out-door sports and offer an escape fromthe too-wearying cities. On the other hand, a powerfuland ever-growing interest is that of the horse,racer or trotter. He brings into the State his increasingcapital, his types of men. Year after yearhe buys farms, and lays out tracks, and buildsstables, and edits journals, and turns agricultureinto grazing. In time the Blue-grass Region maybecome the Yorkshire of America.

But let the future have its own. The country willbecome theirs who deserve it, whether they buildpalaces or barns. One only hopes that when the oldhomesteads have been torn down or have fallen intoruins, the tradition may still run that they, too, hadtheir day and deserved their page of history.[229]

THROUGH CUMBERLAND GAP ON HORSEBACK

Fresh fields lay before us that summerof 1885. We had left the rich, rollingplains of the Blue-grass Region in centralKentucky and set our faces towards thegreat Appalachian uplift on the south-eastern borderof the State. There Cumberland Gap, that high-swunggate-way through the mountain, abides as alandmark of what Nature can do when she wishesto give an opportunity to the human race in its migrationsand discoveries, without surrendering controlof its liberty and its fate. It can never be tooclearly understood by those who are wont to speakof "the Kentuckians" that this State has within itsboundaries two entirely distinct elements of population—elementsdistinct in England before theycame hither, distinct during more than a century ofresidence here, and distinct now in all that goes toconstitute a separate community—occupations, mannersand customs, dress, views of life, civilization.It is but a short distance from the blue-grass countryto the eastern mountains; but in traversing ityou detach yourself from all that you have ever experienced,and take up the history of English-speaking[232]men and women at the point it had reached ahundred or a hundred and fifty years ago.

Leaving Lexington, then, which is in the midstof the blue-grass plateau, we were come to Burnside,where begin the navigable waters of the CumberlandRiver, and the foot-hills of the CumberlandMountains.

Burnside is not merely a station, but a mountainwatering-place. The water is mostly in the bed ofthe river. We had come hither to get horses andsaddle-bags, but to no purpose. The hotel was asort of transition point between the civilization wehad left and the primitive society we were to enter.On the veranda were some distinctly modern andconventional red chairs; but a green and yellowgourd-vine, carefully trained so as to shut out thelandscape, was a genuine bit of local color. Underthe fine beeches in the yard was swung a hammock,but it was made of boards braced between ropes,and was covered with a weather-stained piece of tarpaulin.There were electric bells in the house thatdid not electrify; and near the front entrance threebarrels of Irish potatoes, with the tops off, spoke forthemselves in the absence of the bill of fare. Aftersupper, the cook, a tall, blue-eyed, white fellow, walkedinto my room without explanation, and carriedaway his guitar, showing that he had been wont toset his sighs to music in that quarter of the premises.The moon hung in that part of the heavens,[233][234][235]and no doubt ogled him into many a midnight frenzy.Sitting under a beech-tree in the morning, I hadwatched a child from some city, dressed in whiteand wearing a blue ribbon around her goldenishhair, amuse herself by rolling old barrels (potatobarrels probably, and she may have had a motive)down the hill-side and seeing them dashed to pieceson the railway track below. By-and-by some of thestaves of one fell in, the child tumbled in also, andthey all rolled over together. Upon the whole, itwas an odd overlapping of two worlds. When therailway was first opened through this region a youngman established a fruit store at one of the stations,and as part of his stock laid in a bunch of bananas.One day a mountaineer entered. Arrangementsgenerally struck him with surprise, but everythingelse was soon forgotten in an adhesive contemplationof that mighty aggregation of fruit. Finallyhe turned away with this comment: "Damn me ifthem ain't the damnedest beansI ever seen!"

The scenery around Burnside is beautiful, and theclimate bracing. In the valleys was formerly a finegrowth of walnut, but the principal timbers now areoak, ash, and sycamore, with yellow pine. I heardof a wonderful walnut tree formerly standing, byhiring vehicles to go and see which the owner ofa livery-stable made three hundred and fifty dollars.Six hundred were offered for it on the spot. Thehills are filled with the mountain limestone—that[236]Kentucky oolite of which the new Cotton Exchangein New York is built. Here was Burnside's depotof supplies during the war, and here passed thegreat road—made in part a corduroy road at hisorder—from Somerset, Kentucky, to Jacksborough,over which countless stores were taken from centralKentucky and regions farther north into Tennessee.Supplies were brought up the river in smallsteamboats or overland in wagons, and when theroad grew impassable, pack-mules were used. Sadsights there were in those sad days: the carcassesof animals at short intervals from here to Knoxville,and now and then a mule sunk up to his body inmire, and abandoned, with his pack on, to die. Herewere batteries planted and rifle-pits dug, the vestigesof which yet remain; but where the forest timberswere then cut down a vigorous new growth has longbeen reclaiming the earth to native wildness, andaltogether the aspect of the place is peaceful andserene. Doves were flying in and out of the cornfieldson the hill-sides; there were green stretchesin the valleys where cattle were grazing; and these,together with a single limestone road that woundupward over a distant ridge, recalled the richerscenes of the blue-grass lands.

Assured that we should find horses and saddlebags at Cumberland Falls,we left Burnside in the afternoon, and were soon set down at a stationsome fifteen miles farther along, where a hack conveyed[237] us toanother of those mountain watering-places that are being opened up invarious parts of eastern Kentucky for the enjoyment of a people that hasnever cared to frequent in large numbers the Atlantic seaboard.

As we drove on, the darkness was falling, and the scenery along the roadgrew wilder and grander. A terrific storm had swept over these heights,and the great trees lay uptorn and prostrate in every direction, orreeled and fell against each other like drunken giants—a scene offearful elemental violence. On the summits one sees the tan-bark oak;lower down, the white oak; and[238]lower yet, fine specimens of yellow poplar; while from the valleys tothe crests is a dense and varied undergrowth, save where the ground hasbeen burned over, year after year, to kill it out and improve thegrazing. Twenty miles to the south-east we had seen through thepale-tinted air the waving line of Jellico Mountains in Tennessee. Awayto the north lay the Beaver Creek and the lower Cumberland, while infront of us rose the craggy, scowling face of Anvil Rock, commanding aview of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. The utter silence andheart-oppressing repose of primeval nature was around us. The starkwhite and gray trunks of the immemorial forest dead linked us to aninviolable past. The air seemed to blow upon us from over regionsillimitable and unexplored, and to be fraught with unutterablesuggestions. The full-moon swung itself aloft over the sharp touchingsof the green with spectral pallor; and the evening-star stood lustrouson the western horizon in depths of blue as cold as a sky of Landseer,except where brushed by tremulous shadows of rose on the verge of thesunlit world. A bat wheeled upward in fantastic curves out of hisundiscovered glade. And the soft tinkle of a single cow-bell far belowmarked the invisible spot of some lonely human habitation. By-and-by welost sight of the heavens altogether, so dense and interlaced theforest. The descent of the hack appeared to be into a steep abyss ofgloom;[239]then all at once we broke from the edge of the woods into a flood ofmoonlight; at our feet were the whirling, foaming rapids of the river;in our ears was the roar of the cataract, where the bow-crowned mistrose and floated upward and away in long trailing shapes of ethereallightness.

The Cumberland River throws itself over the rocks here with a fall ofseventy feet, or a perpendicular descent of sixty-two, making a mimicbut beautiful Niagara. Just below, at Eagle Falls, it drops over itsprecipice in a lawny cascade. The roar of the cataract, under favorableconditions, may be heard up and down stream a distance of ten or twelvemiles. You will not find in mountainous Kentucky a more picturesquespot.

While here, we had occasion to extend our acquaintance with nativetypes. Two young men came to the hotel, bringing a bag of small, hardpeaches to sell. Slim, slab-sided, stomachless, and[240]serene, mild, and melancholy, they might have been lotos-eaters, onlythe suggestion of poetry was wanting. Their unutterable content came notfrom the lotus, but from their digestion. If they could sell theirpeaches, they would be happy; if not, they would be happy. What theycould not sell, they could as well eat; and since no bargain was made onthis occasion, they took chairs on the hotel veranda, opened the bag,and fell to. I talked with the Benjamin of his tribe:

"Ketch him and parbile him, and then put him in[241]cold water and soak him, and then put him in andbake him."

Here, among other discoveries, was a linguisticone—the use of "several" in the sense of a greatmany, probably an innumerable multitude, as in thecase of the 'coons.

They hung around the hotel for hours, as beingsutterly exempt from all the obligations and otherphenomena of time.

The guide bespoken the evening before had made arrangements for our rideof some eighteen miles—was it not forty?—to Williamsburg;and in the afternoon made his appearance with three horses. Of these onewas a mule, with a strong leaning towards his father's family. Of thethree saddles one was a side-saddle, and another was an army saddle withrefugee stirrups. The three beasts wore among them some seven shoes. Myown mincing jade had none. Her name must have been Helen of Troy (allhorses are named in Kentucky), so long ago had her great beautydisappeared. She partook with me of the terror which her own movementsinspired; and if there ever was a well-defined case in which the manshould have carried the beast, this was the[242]one. While on her back I occasionally apologized for the injustice ofriding her by handing her some sour apples, the like of which sheappeared never to have tasted before, just as it was told me she hadnever known the luxury of wearing shoes. It is often true that the ownerof a horse in this region is too poor or too mean to have it shod.

Our route from Cumberland Falls lay through what is called "LittleTexas," in Whitley County—a wilderness some twenty miles square. Isay route, because there was not always a road; but for the guide, therewould not always have been a direction. Rough as the country appears toone riding through it on horseback, it is truly called "flat woodscountry;" and viewed from Jellico Mountains, whence the local elevationsare of no account, it looks like one vast sweep of sloping,densely-wooded land. Here one may see noble specimens of yellow poplarin the deeper soil at the head of the ravines; pin-oak, and gum andwillow, and the rarely beautiful wild-cucumber. Along the streams in thelowlands blooms the wild calacanthus, filling the air with fragrance,and here in season the wild camellia throws open its white and purplesplendors.

It was not until we had passed out of "Little Texas" and reachedWilliamsburg, had gone thence to Barbourville, the county-seat of theadjoining county of Knox, and thence again into Bell County, that westopped at an old way-side inn on the Wilderness[243][244][245]road from Kentucky through CumberlandGap. Around us were the mountains—around usthe mountaineers whom we wished to study.

Straight, slim, angular, white bodies; average oreven unusual stature, without great muscular robustness;features regular and colorless; unanimatedbut intelligent; in the men sometimes fierce; in thewomen often sad; among the latter occasional beautyof a pure Greek type; a manner shy and deferential,but kind and fearless; eyes with a slow, longlook of mild inquiry, or of general listlessness, or ofunconscious and unaccountable melancholy; the keyof life a low minor strain, losing itself in reverie;voices monotonous in intonation; movements uninformedby nervousness—these are characteristics ofthe Kentucky mountaineers. Living to-day as theirforefathers lived a hundred years ago; hearing littleof the world, caring nothing for it; responding feeblyto the influences of civilization near the highwaysof travel in and around the towns, and latterlyalong the lines of railway communication; but sureto live here, if uninvaded and unaroused, in the samecondition for a hundred years to come; lacking thespirit of development from within; devoid of sympathy[246]with that boundless and ungovernable activitywhich is carrying the Saxon race in America fromone state to another, whether better or worse. Theorigin of these people, the relation they sustain tothe different population of the central Kentuckyregion—in fine, an account of them from the dateof their settling in these mountains to the presenttime, when, as it seems, they are on the point oflosing their isolation, and with it their distinctiveness—wouldimprison phases of life and charactervaluable alike to the special history of this countryand to the general history of the human mind.

The land in these mountains is all claimed, butit is probably not all covered by actual patent. Asevidence, a company has been formed to speculatein lands not secured by title. The old careless wayof marking off boundaries by going from tree totree, by partly surveying and partly guessing, explainsthe present uncertainty. Many own land byright of occupancy, there being no other claim. Thegreat body of the people live on and cultivate littlepatches which they either own, or hold free, or payrent for with a third of the crop. These not unfrequentlyget together and trade farms as theywould horses, no deed being executed. There isamong them a mobile element—squatters—whomake a hill-side clearing and live on it as long asit remains productive; then they move elsewhere.This accounts for the presence throughout the country[247][248][249]of abandoned cabins, around which a new forestgrowth is springing up. Leaving out of considerationthe few instances of substantial prosperity, themost of the people are abjectly poor, and they appearto have no sense of accumulation. The maincrops raised are corn and potatoes. In the scantgardens will be seen patches of cotton, sorghum,and tobacco; flax also, though less than formerly.Many make insufficient preparation for winter, layingup no meat, but buying a piece of bacon nowand then, and paying for it with work. In someregions the great problem of life is to raise twodollars and a half during the year for county taxes.Being pauper counties, they are exempt from Statetaxation. Jury fees are highly esteemed and muchsought after. The manufacture of illicit mountainwhiskey—"moonshine"—was formerly, as it is now,a considerable source of revenue; and a desperatesub-source of revenue from the same business hasbeen the betrayal of its hidden places. There isnothing harder or more dangerous to find now inthe mountains than a still.

Formerly digging "sang," as they call ginseng,was a general occupation. For this China was agreat market. It has nearly all been dug out exceptin the wildest parts of the country, where entirefamilies may still be seen "out sangin'." Theytook it into the towns in bags, selling it at a dollarand ten cents—perhaps a dollar and a half—a pound.[250]This was mainly the labor of the women and thechildren, who went to work barefooted, amid briersand chestnut burs, copperheads and rattlesnakes.Indeed, the women prefer to go barefooted, findingshoes a trouble and constraint. It was a sad dayfor the people when the "sang" grew scarce. Afew years ago one of the counties was nearly depopulatedin consequence of a great exodus into Arkansas,whence had come the news that "sang" wasplentiful. Not long since, during a season of scarcityin corn, a local store-keeper told the people of acounty to go out and gather all the mandrake or"May-apple" root they could find. At first onlythe women and children went to work, the menholding back with ridicule. By-and-by they alsotook part, and that year some fifteen tons were gathered,at three cents a pound, and the whole countrythus got its seed-corn. Wild ginger was anotherroot formerly much dug; also to less extent "golden-seal"and "bloodroot." The sale of feathers froma few precarious geese helps to eke out subsistence.Their methods of agriculture—if methods they maybe styled—are the most primitive. Ploughing iscommonly done with a "bull-tongue," an implementhardly more than a sharpened stick with a metalrim; this is often drawn by an ox, or a half-yoke.But one may see women ploughing with two oxen.Traces are made of hickory or papaw, as also arebed-cords. Ropes are made of lynn bark. In some[251]counties there is not so much as a fanning-mill,grain being winnowed by pouring it from basket tobasket, after having been threshed with a flail, whichis a hickory withe some seven feet long. Theirthreshing-floor is a clean place on the ground, andthey take up grain, gravel, and dirt together, notknowing, or not caring for, the use of a sieve.

The grain is ground at their homes in a handtub-mill, or one made by setting the nether millstonein a bee-gum, or by cutting a hole in a puncheon-log[252]and sinking the stone into it. There are,however, other kinds of mills: the primitive littlewater-mill, which may be considered almost characteristicof this region; in a few places improvedwater-mills, and small steam-mills. It is the countryof mills, farm-houses being furnished with oneas with coffee-pot or spinning-wheel. A simplerway of preparing corn for bread than by even thehand-mill is used in the late summer and early autumn,while the grain is too hard for eating asroasting-ears, and too soft to be ground in a mill.On a board is tacked a piece of tin through whichholes have been punched from the under side, andover this tin the ears are rubbed, producing a coarsemeal, of which "gritted bread" is made. Muchpleasure and much health they get from their "grittedbread," which is sweet and wholesome for ahungry man.

Where civilization has touched on the highwaysand the few improved mills have been erected, onemay see women going to mill with their scant sacksof grain, riding on a jack, a jennet, or a bridled ox.But this is not so bad as in North Carolina, where,Europa like, they ride on bulls.

Aside from such occupations, the men have nothingto do—a little work in the spring, and ninemonths' rest. They love to meet at the countrygroceries and cross-roads, to shoot matches for beef,turkeys, or liquor, and to gamble. There is with[253]them a sort of annual succession of amusements.In its season they have the rage for pitching horseshoes,the richer ones using dollar pieces. In consequenceof their abundant leisure, the lonelinessof the mountains, and their bravery and vigor, quarrelsare frequent and feuds deadly. Personal enmitiessoon serve to array entire families in an attitudeof implacable hostility; and in the course oftime relatives and friends take sides, and a war ofextermination ensues. The special origins of thesefeuds are various: blood heated and temper lostunder the influence of "moonshine;" reporting theplaces and manufacturers of this; local politics; thesurvival of resentments engendered during the CivilWar. These, together with all causes that lie in thepassions of the human heart and spring from theconstitution of all human society, often make the remoteand insulated life of these people turbulent,reckless, and distressing.

But while thus bitter and cruel towards each other,they present to strangers the aspect of a polite,kind, unoffending, and most hospitable race. Theywill divide with you shelter and warmth and food,however scant, and will put themselves to troublefor your convenience with an unreckoning, earnestfriendliness and good-nature that is touching to thelast degree. No sham, no pretence; a true friend,or an open enemy. Of late they have had muchoccasion to regard new-comers with distrust, which,[254]once aroused, is difficult to dispel; and now theywill wish to know you and your business beforetreating you with that warmth which they are onlytoo glad to show.

The women do most of the work. From the fewsheep, running wild, which the farm may own, theytake the wool, which is carded, reeled, spun, andwoven into fabrics by their own hands and on theirrude implements. One or two spinning-wheels willbe found in every house. Cotton from their littlepatches they clean by using a primitive hand cotton-gin.Flax, much spun formerly, is now less used.It is surprising to see from what appliances theywill bring forth exquisite fabrics: garments for personalwear, bedclothes, and the like. When theycan afford it they make carpets.

They have, as a rule, luxuriant hair. In somecounties one is struck by the purity of the Saxontype, and their faces in early life are often handsome.But one hears that in certain localities theyare prone to lose their teeth, and that after the ageof thirty-five it is a rare thing to see a woman whoseteeth are not partly or wholly wanting. The reasonis not apparent. They appear passionately fond ofdress, and array themselves in gay colors and injewelry (pinchbeck), if their worldly estate justifiesthe extravagance. Oftener, if young, they have amodest, shy air, as if conscious that their garb isnot decorous. Whether married or unmarried, they[255][256][257]show much natural diffidence. It is told that in remoterdistricts of the mountains they are not allowedto sit at the table with the male members ofthe household, but serve them as in ancient societies.Commonly, in going to church, the men rideand carry the children, while the women walk.Dancing in some regions is hardly known, but inothers is a favorite amusement, and in its movementsmen and women show grace. The mountainpreachers oppose it as a sin.

Marriages take place early. They are a fecundrace. I asked them time and again to fix upon theaverage number of children to a family, and theygave as the result seven. In case of parental oppositionto wedlock, the lovers run off. There isamong the people a low standard of morality intheir domestic relations, the delicate privacies ofhome life having little appreciation where so manypersons, without regard to age or sex, are crowdedtogether within very limited quarters.

The dwellings—often mere cabins with a singleroom—are built of rough-hewn logs, chinked ordaubed, though not always. Often there is a puncheonfloor and no chamber roof. One of these mountaineers,called into court to testify as to the householdgoods of a defendant neighbor, gave in as theinventory, a string of pumpkins, a skillet without ahandle, and "a wild Bill." "A wild Bill" is a bedmade by boring auger-holes into a log, driving sticks[258]into these, and overlaying them with hickory barkand sedge-grass—a favorite couch. The low chimneys,made usually of laths daubed, are so low thatthe saying, inelegant though true, is current, thatyou may sit by the fire inside and spit out over thetop. The cracks in the walls are often large enoughto give ingress and egress to child or dog. Evencellars are little known, potatoes sometimes beingkept during winter in a hole dug under the hearthstone.More frequently a trap-door is made throughthe plank flooring in the middle of the room, andin a hole beneath are put potatoes, and, in case ofwealth, jellies and preserves. Despite the wretchednessof their habitations and the rigors of mountainclimate, they do not suffer with cold, and one maysee them out in snow knee-deep clad in low brogans,and nothing heavier than a jeans coat and hunting-shirt.

The customary beverage is coffee, bitter andblack, not having been roasted but burnt. Alldrink it, from the youngest up. Another beverageis "mountain tea," which is made from the sweet-scentedgolden-rod and from winter-green—the NewEngland checkerberry. These decoctions they mollifywith home-made sorghum molasses, which theycall "long sweetening," or with sugar, which by contrastis known as "short sweetening."

Of home government there is little or none, boysespecially setting aside at will parental authority;[259]but a sort of traditional sense of duty and decorumrestrains them by its silent power, and moulds theminto respect. Children while quite young are oftenplump to roundness, but soon grow thin and whiteand meagre like the parents. There is little desirefor knowledge or education. The mountain schoolshave sometimes less than half a dozen pupils duringthe few months they are in session. A gentlemanwho wanted a coal bank opened, engaged for thework a man passing along the road. Some dayslater he learned that his workman was a schoolteacher,who, in consideration of the seventy-fivecents a day, had dismissed his academy.[260]

Many, allured by rumors from the West, have migratedthither, but nearly all come back, from loveof the mountains, from indisposition to cope withthe rush and vigor and enterprise of frontier life.Theirs, they say, is a good lazy man's home.

Their customs respecting the dead are interesting.When a husband dies his funeral sermon isnot preached, but the death of the wife is awaited,and vice versa. Then a preacher is sent for, friendand neighbor called in, and the respect is paid bothtogether. Often two or three preachers are summoned,and each delivers a sermon. More peculiaris the custom of having the services for one personrepeated; so that the dead get their funeralspreached several times, months and years after theirburial. I heard of the pitiful story of two sisterswho had their mother's funeral preached once everysummer as long as they lived. You may engagethe women in mournful conversation respecting thedead, but hardly the men. In strange contrast withthis regard for ceremonial observances is their neglectof the graves of their beloved, which they donot seem at all to visit when once closed, or to decoratewith those symbols of affection which are thecommon indications of bereavement.

Nothing that I have ever seen is so lonely, sotouching in its neglect and wild, irreparable solitude,as one of these mountain graveyards. On someknoll under a clump of trees, or along some hill-side[261]where dense oak-trees make a mid-day gloom, youwalk amid the unknown, undistinguishable dead.Which was father and which mother, where arelover and stricken sweetheart, whether this is thedust of laughing babe or crooning grandam, youwill never know: no foot-stones, no head-stones;[262]sometimes a few rough rails laid around, as youwould make a little pen for swine. In places, however,one sees a picket-fence put up, or a sort ofshed built over.

Traditions and folk-lore among them are evanescent,and vary widely in different localities. Itappears that in part they are sprung from the earlyhunters who came into the mountains when gamewas abundant, sport unfailing, living cheap. Amongthem now are still-hunters, who know the haunts ofbear and deer, needing no dogs. They even nowprefer wild meat—even "'possum" and "'coon" andground-hog—to any other. In Bell County I spentthe day in the house of a woman eighty years old,who was a lingering representative of a nearly extincttype. She had never been out of the neighborhoodof her birth, knew the mountains like agarden, had whipped men in single-handed encounter,brought down many a deer and wild turkey withher own rifle, and now, infirm, had but to sit in hercabin door and send her trained dogs into the depthsof the forests to discover the wished-for game. Afiercer woman I never looked on.[263]

III

Our course now lay direct towards CumberlandGap, some twenty miles southward. Our road ranalong the bank of the Cumberland River to the ford,the immemorial crossing-place of early travel—and abeautiful spot—thence to Pineville, situated in thatnarrow opening in Pine Mountain where the rivercuts it, and thence through the valley of YellowCreek to the wonderful pass. The scenery in thisregion is one succession of densely wooded mountains,blue-tinted air, small cultivated tracts in thefertile valleys, and lovely watercourses.

Along the first part of our route the river slipscrystal-clear over its rocky bed, and beneath thelone green pendent branches of the trees that crowdthe banks. At the famous ford it was only two orthree feet deep at the time of our crossing. This isa historic point. Here was one of the oldest settlementsin the country; here the Federal army destroyedthe houses and fences during the Civil War;and here Zollikoffer came to protect the Kentuckygate that opens into East Tennessee. At Pineville,just beyond, we did not remain long. For some reasonsnot clearly understood by travellers, a dead-linehad been drawn through the midst of the town, and[264]not knowing on which side we were entitled to stand,we hastened on to a place where we might occupyneutral ground.

The situation is strikingly picturesque: the mountainlooks as if cleft sheer and fallen apart, the peakson each side rising almost perpendicularly, with massiveoverhanging crests wooded to the summits, butshowing gray rifts of the inexhaustible limestone.The river when lowest is here at an elevation of ninehundred and sixty feet, and the peaks leap to theheight of twenty-two hundred. Here in the futurewill most probably pass a railroad, and be a populoustown, for here is the only opening through PineMountain from "the brakes" of Sandy to the Tennesseeline, and tributary to the watercourses thatcentre here are some five hundred thousand acres oftimber land.

The ride from Pineville to the Gap, fourteen milessouthward, is most beautiful. Yellow Creek becomesin local pronunciation "Yaller Crick." One cannotbe long in eastern Kentucky without being struckby the number and character of the names given tothe watercourses, which were the natural avenuesof migratory travel. Few of the mountains havenames. What a history is shut up in these names!Cutshin Creek, where some pioneer, they say, damagedthose useful members; but more probably wheregrows a low greenbrier which cuts the shins and riddlesthe pantaloons. These pioneers had humor.[265]They named one creek "Troublesome," for reasonsapparent to him who goes there; another, "NoWorse Creek," on equally good grounds; another,"Defeated Creek;" and a great many, "Lost Creek."In one part of the country it is possible for one toenter "Hell fur Sartain," and get out at "KingdomCome." Near by are "Upper Devil" and "LowerDevil." One day we went to a mountain meetingwhich was held in "a school-house and church-house"[266]on "Stinking Creek." One might suppose they wouldhave worshipped in a more fragrant locality; butthe stream is very beautiful, and not malodorous. Itreceived its name from its former canebrakes anddeer licks, which made game abundant. Great numberswere killed for choice bits of venison and hides.Then there are "Ten-mile Creek" and "Sixteen-mileCreek," meaning to clinch the distance byname; and what is philologically interesting, onefinds numerous "Trace Forks," originally "TrailForks."

Bell County and the Yellow Creek Valley serveto illustrate the incalculable mineral and timber resourcesof eastern Kentucky. Our road at timescut through forests of magnificent timbers—oak(black and white), walnut (black and white), poplar,maple, and chestnut, beech, lynn, gum, dogwood, andelm. Here are some of the finest coal-fields in theworld, the one on Clear Creek being fourteen feetthick. Here are pure cannel-coals and coking-coals.At no other point in the Mississippi Valley are ironores suitable for steel-making purposes so close tofuel so cheap. With an eastern coal-field of 10,000square miles, with an area equally large coveredwith a virgin growth of the finest economic timbers,with watercourses feasible and convenient, itcannot be long before eastern Kentucky will beopened up to great industries. Enterprise has alreadyturned hither, and the distinctiveness of the[267]mountaineer race already begins to disappear. Thetwo futures before them are, to be swept out ofthese mountains by the in-rushing spirit of contendingindustries, or to be aroused, civilized, anddeveloped.

Long before you come in sight of the great Gap,the idea of it dominates the mind. While yet somemiles away it looms up, 1675 feet in elevation, somehalf a mile across from crest to crest, the pinnacleon the left towering to the height of 2500 feet.

It was late in the afternoon when our tired horsesbegan the long, winding, rocky climb from the valleyto the brow of the pass. As we stood in thepassway, amid the deepening shadows of the twilightand the solemn repose of the mighty landscape, theGap seemed to be crowded with two invisible andcountless pageants of human life, the one passing in,the other passing out; and the air grew thick withunheard utterances—primeval sounds, undistinguishableand strange, of creatures nameless and neverseen by man; the wild rush and whoop of retreatingand pursuing tribes; the slow steps of watchfulpioneers; the wail of dying children and the songsof homeless women; the muffled tread of routedand broken armies—all the sounds of surprise anddelight, victory and defeat, hunger and pain, andweariness and despair, that the human heart can utter.Here passed the first of the white race wholed the way into the valley of the Cumberland; here[268]passed that small band of fearless men who gave theGap its name; here passed the "Long Hunters;"here rushed the armies of the Civil War; here haspassed the wave of westerly emigration, whose forcehas spent itself only on the Pacific slopes; and herein the long future must flow backward and forwardthe wealth of the North and the South.[269]

MOUNTAIN PASSES OF THE CUMBERLAND

The writer has been publishing during thelast few years a series of articles on Kentucky.With this article the series willbe brought to a close. Hitherto he haswritten of nature in the Blue-grass Region and ofcertain aspects of life; but as he comes to takeleave of his theme, he finds his attention fixed uponthat great mountain wall which lies along the southeasternedge of the State. At various points ofthis wall are now beginning to be enacted newscenes in the history of Kentucky; and what duringa hundred years has been an inaccessible background,is becoming the fore-front of a civilizationwhich will not only change the life of the Statewithin, but advance it to a commanding position innational economic affairs.

But it should not be lost sight of that in writingthis article, as in writing all the others, it is withthe human problem in Kentucky that he is solelyconcerned. He will seem to be dealing with commercialactivities for their own sake. He will writeof coals and ores and timbers, of ovens and tunnelsand mines; but if the reader will bear with[272]him to the end, he will learn that these are dealtwith only for the sake of looking beyond them atthe results which they bring on: town-making in variousstages, the massing and distributing of wealth,the movements of population, the dislodgment ofisolated customs—on the whole, results that lie inthe domain of the human problem in its deepestphases.

Consider for a moment, then, what this great wallis, and what influence it has had over the history ofKentucky and upon the institutions and characteristicsof its people.

You may begin at the western frontier of Kentuckyon the Mississippi River, about five hundredmiles away, and travel steadily eastward across thebillowy plateau of the State, going up and up all thetime until you come to its base, and above its baseit rises to the height of some three thousand feet.For miles before you reach it you discover that it isdefended by a zone of almost inaccessible hills withsteep slopes, forests difficult to penetrate, and narrowjagged gorges; and further defended by a singlesharp wall-like ridge, having an elevation ofabout twenty-two hundred feet, and lying nearlyparallel with it, at a distance of about twenty miles.Or, if you should attempt to reach this wall fromthe south, you would discover that from that sidealso it is hardly less hostile to approach. Hence ithas stood in its virgin wilderness, a vast isolating[273]and isolated barrier, fierce, beautiful, storm-racked,serene; in winter, brown and gray, with its nakedwoods and rifts of stone, or mantled in white; insummer, green, or of all greens from darkest to palest,and touched with all shades of bloom; in autumn,colored like the sunset clouds; curtained all theyear by exquisite health-giving atmospheres, liftingitself all the year towards lovely, changing skies.

Understand the position of this natural fortress-linewith regard to the area of Kentucky. Thatarea has somewhat the shape of an enormous flatfoot, with a disjointed big toe, a roughly hacked-offankle, and a missing heel. The sole of this hugefoot rests solidly on Tennessee, the Ohio Rivertrickles across the ankle and over the top, the bigtoe is washed entirely off by the Tennessee River,and the long-missing heel is to be found in Virginia,never having been ceded by that State. Betweenthe Kentucky foot and the Virginia heel is piled upthis immense, bony, grisly mass of the CumberlandMountain, extending some three hundred miles north-eastand south-west.

It was through this heel that Kentucky had to bepeopled. The thin, half-starved, weary line of pioneercivilizers had to penetrate it, and climb this obstructingmountain wall, as a line of travelling antsmight climb the wall of a castle. In this case onlythe strongest of the ants—the strongest in body, thestrongest in will—succeeded in getting over and[274]establishing their colony in the country far beyond.Luckily there was an enormous depression in thewall, or they might never have scaled it. Duringabout half a century this depression was the difficult,exhausting entrance-point through which the Statereceived the largest part of its people, the furnitureof their homes, and the implements of their civilization;so that from the very outset that people representedthe most striking instance of a survival ofthe fittest that may be observed in the founding ofany American commonwealth. The feeblest of theants could not climb the wall; the idlest of themwould not. Observe, too, that, once on the otherside, it was as hard to get back as it had been toget over. That is, the Cumberland Mountain keptthe little ultramontane society isolated. Being isolated,it was kept pure-blooded. Being isolated, itdeveloped the spirit and virtues engendered by isolation.Hence those traits for which Kentuckianswere once, and still think themselves, distinguished—passionfor self-government, passion for personalindependence, bravery, fortitude, hospitality. On accountof this mountain barrier the entire civilizationof the State has had a one-sided development. Ithas become known for pasturage and agriculture,whiskey, hemp, tobacco, and fine stock. On accountof it the great streams of colonization flowing fromthe North towards the South, and flowing from theAtlantic seaboard towards the West, have divided[275]and passed around Kentucky as waters divide andpass around an island, uniting again on the fartherside. It has done the like for the highways of commerce,so that the North has become woven to theSouth and the East woven to the West by a connectingtissue of railroads, dropping Kentucky outas though it had no vital connection, as though itwere not a controlling point of connection, for thefour sections of the country. Thus keeping outrailroads, it has kept out manufactures, kept outcommerce, kept out industrial cities. For three-quartersof a century generations of young Kentuckianshave had to seek pursuits of this characterin other quarters, thus establishing a constant drainingaway from the State of its resolute, vigorousmanhood. Restricting the Kentuckians who haveremained to an agricultural type of life, it hasbrought upon them a reputation for lack of enterprise.More than all this has that great barrierwall done for the history of Kentucky. For, withina hundred years, the only thing to take possessionof it, slowly, sluggishly overspreading the region ofits foot-hills, its vales and fertile slopes—the onlything to take possession of it and to claim it hasbeen a race of mountaineers, an idle, shiftless, ignorant,lawless population, whose increasing numbers,pauperism, and lawlessness, whose family feuds andclan-like vendettas, have for years been steadily gainingfor Kentucky the reputation for having one of[276]the worst backwoods populations on the continent,or, for that matter, in the world.

But for the presence of this wall the history of theState, indeed the history of the United States, wouldhave been profoundly different. Long ago, in virtueof its position, Kentucky would have knit together,instead of holding apart, the North and the South.The campaigns and the results of the Civil Warwould have been changed; the Civil War might neverhave taken place. But standing as it has stood, ithas left Kentucky, near the close of the first centuryof its existence as a State, with a reputation somewhatlike the shape of its territory—unsymmetric,mutilated, and with certain parts missing.

But now consider this wall of the CumberlandMountain from another point of view. If you shouldstand on the crest at any point where it forms theboundary of Kentucky; or south of it, where it extendsinto Tennessee; or north of it, where it extendsinto Virginia—if you should stand thus andlook northward, you would look out upon a vast areaof coal. For many years now it has been knownthat the coal-measure rocks of eastern Kentuckycomprise about a fourth of the area of the State,and are not exceeded in value by those of any otherState. It has been known that this buried solarforce exceeds that of Great Britain. Later it hasbecome known that the Kentucky portion of thegreat Appalachian coal-field contains the largest[277]area of rich cannel-coals yet discovered, these havingbeen traced in sixteen counties, and some ofthem excelling by test the famous cannel-coal ofGreat Britain; later it has become known that hereis to be found the largest area of coking-coal yetdiscovered, the main coal—discovered a few yearsago, and named the "Elkhorn"—having been tracedover sixteen hundred square miles, and equallingAmerican standard coke in excellence.

Further, looking northward, you look out upon a region of iron ores, thedeposits in Kentucky ranking sixth in variety and extent among those tobe found in all other States, and being better disposed for working thanany except those of Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama. For a hundredyears now, it should be remembered in this connection, iron has beensmelted in Kentucky, been and been an important[278]article of commerce. As early as 1823 it wasmade at Cumberland Gap, and shipped by river tomarkets as remote as New Orleans and St. Louis. Atan early date, also, it was made in a small charcoalforge at Big Creek Gap, and was hauled in wagonsinto central Kentucky, where it found a ready marketfor such purposes as plough-shares and wagon tires.

Further, looking northward, you have extendingfar and wide before you the finest primeval regionof hard-woods in America.

Suppose, now, that you turn and look from thissame crest of the Cumberland Mountain southward,or towards the Atlantic seaboard. In that directionthere lie some two hundred and fifty thousand squaremiles of country which is practically coalless; butpractically coalless, it is incalculably rich in iron oresfor the manufacture of iron and steel. You look outupon the new industrial empire of the United States,with vast and ever-growing needs of manufactures,fuel, and railroads. That is, for a hundred miles youstand on the dividing line of two distinct geologicalformations: to the north, the Appalachian coal-fields;to the south, mountains of iron ores; rearing itselfbetween these, this immense barrier wall, which createsan unapproachable wilderness not only in southeasternKentucky, but in East Tennessee, westernVirginia, and western North Carolina—the largestextent of country in the United States remainingundeveloped.[279]

But the time had to come when this wildernesswould be approached on all sides, attacked, penetratedto the heart. Such wealth of resourcescould not be let alone or remain unused. As respectsthe development of the region, the industrialproblem may be said to have taken two forms—theone, the development of the coal and iron on oppositesides of the mountains, the manufacture of cokeand iron and steel, the establishment of wood-workingindustries, and the delivery of all products to themarkets of the land; second, the bringing togetherof the coals on the north side and the ores throughoutthe south. In this way, then, the CumberlandMountain no longer offered a barrier merely to thecivilization of Kentucky, but to the solution of thegreatest economic problem of the age—the cheapestmanufacture of iron and steel. But before the pressureof this need the mountain had to give way andsurrender its treasures. At any cost of money andlabor, the time had to come when it would pay tobring these coals and ores together. But how wasthis to be done? The answer was simple: it mustbe done by means of natural water gaps and by tunnelsthrough the mountain. It is the object of thispaper to call attention to the way in which the newcivilization of the South is expected to work at fourmountain passes, and to point out some of the resultswhich are to follow.[280]

On the Kentucky side of the mighty wall of theCumberland Mountain, and nearly parallel with it,is the sharp single wall of Pine Mountain, the westernmostridge of the Alleghany system. For abouta hundred miles these two gnarled and ancient monsterslie crouched side by side, guarding betweenthem their hidden stronghold of treasure—an immensevalley of timbers and irons and coals. Nearthe middle point of this inner wall there occurs ageological fault. The mountain falls apart as thoughcut in twain by some heavy downward stroke, showingon the faces of the fissure precipitous sides woodedto the crests. There is thus formed the celebratedand magnificent pass through which theCumberland River—one of the most beautiful inthe land—slips silently out of its mountain valley,and passes on to the hills and the plateaus of Kentucky.In the gap there is a space for the bed ofthis river, and on each side of the river space for aroadway and nothing more.

Note the commanding situation of this inner pass.Travel east along Pine Mountain or travel west, andyou find no other water gap within a hundred miles.Through this that thin, toiling line of pioneer civilizers[281][282][283]made its way, having scaled the great outerCumberland wall some fifteen miles southward. Butfor this single geological fault, by which a water gapof the inner mountain was placed opposite a depressionin the outer mountain, thus creating a continuouspassway through both, the colonization of Kentucky,difficult enough even with this advantage,would have been indefinitely delayed, or from thisside wholly impossible. Through this inner portalwas traced in time the regular path of the pioneers,afterwards known as the Wilderness Road. On accountof the travel over this road and the controllingnature of the site, there was long ago formed onthe spot a little backwoods settlement, calling itselfPineville. It consisted of a single straggling line ofcabins and shanties of logs on each side of a roadway,this road being the path of the pioneers. Inthe course of time it was made the county-seat. Beingthe county-seat, the way-side village, catchingevery traveller on foot or on horse or in wagons, begansome years ago to make itself still better knownas the scene of mountain feuds. The name of thetown when uttered anywhere in Kentucky suggestedbut one thing—a blot on the civilization of the State,a mountain fastness where the human problem seemsmost intractable. A few such places have done moreto foster the unfortunate impression which Kentuckyhas made upon the outside world than all the townsof the blue-grass country put together.[284]

Five summers ago, in 1885, in order to prepare anarticle forHarper's Magazine on the mountain folkof the Cumberland region, I made my way towardsthis mountain town, now riding on a buck-board,now on a horse whose back was like a board thatwas too stiff to buck. The road I travelled wasthat great highway between Kentucky and the Southwhich at various times within a hundred years hasbeen known as the Wilderness Road, or the CumberlandRoad, or the National Turnpike, or the "KaintuckHog Road," as it was called by the mountaineers.It is impossible to come upon this road withoutpausing, or to write of it without a tribute. Itled from Baltimore over the mountains of Virginiathrough the great wilderness by Cumberland Gap.All roads below Philadelphia converged at this gap,just as the buffalo and Indian trails had earlier converged,and just as many railroads are convergingnow. The improvement of this road became intime the pet scheme of the State governments ofVirginia and Kentucky. Before the war millionsof head of stock—horses, hogs, cattle, mules—weredriven over it to the southern markets; and thousandsof vehicles, with families and servants andtrunks, have somehow passed over it, coming northwardinto Kentucky, or going southward on pleasureexcursions. During the war vast commissary storespassed back and forth, following the movement ofarmies. But despite all this—despite all that has[285]been done to civilize it since Boone traced its coursein 1790, this honored historic thoroughfare remainsto-day as it was in the beginning, with all its sloughsand sands, its mud and holes, and jutting ledges ofrock and loose bowlders, and twists and turns, andgeneral total depravity.

It is not surprising that when the original Kentuckianswere settled on the blue-grass plateau theysternly set about the making of good roads, and tothis day remain the best road-builders in America.One such road was enough. They are said to havebeen notorious for profanity, those who came intoKentucky from this side. Naturally. Many wereinfidels—there are roads that make a man lose faith.It is known that the more pious companies of them,as they travelled along, would now and then give upin despair, sit down, raise a hymn, and have prayersbefore they could go farther. Perhaps one of theprovocations to homicide among the mountain peopleshould be reckoned this road. I have seen twoof the mildest of men, after riding over it for a fewhours, lose their temper and begin to fight—fighttheir horses, fight the flies, fight the cobwebs ontheir noses, fight anything.

Over this road, then, and towards this town, oneday, five summers ago, I was picking my course, butnot without pale human apprehensions. At thattime one did not visit Pineville for nothing. WhenI reached it I found it tense with repressed excitement.[286]Only a few days previous there had been amurderous affray in the streets; the inhabitants hadtaken sides; a dead-line had been drawn throughthe town, so that those living on either side crossedto the other at the risk of their lives; and there wasblue murder in the air. I was a stranger; I was innocent;I was peaceful. But I was told that to bea stranger and innocent and peaceful did no good.Stopping to eat, I fain would have avoided, only itseemed best not to be murdered for refusing. Allthat I now remember of the dinner was a corn-breadthat would have made a fine building stone, being ofan attractive bluish tint, hardening rapidly upon exposureto the atmosphere, and being susceptible ofa high polish. A block of this, freshly quarried, Itook, and then was up and away. But not quickly,for having exchanged my horse for another, I foundthat the latter moved off as though at every step expectingto cross the dead-line, and so perish. Theimpression of the place was one never to be forgotten,with its squalid hovels, its ragged armed mencollected suspiciously in little groups, with angry,distrustful faces, or peering out from behind theambush of a window.

A few weeks ago I went again to Pineville, thistime by means of one of the most extensive andpowerful railroad systems of the South. At thestation a 'bus was waiting to take passengers to thehotel. The station was on one side of the river,[287]the hotel on the other. We were driven across anew iron bridge, this being but one of four nowspanning the river formerly crossed at a single ford.At the hotel we were received by a porter of metropolitanurbanity and self-esteem. Entering the hotel,I found it lighted by gas, and full of guests fromdifferent parts of the United States. In the lobbythere was a suppressed murmur of refined voicescoming from groups engaged in serious talk. Asby-and-by I sat in a spacious dining-room, lookingover a freshly-printed bill of fare, some one in theparlors opposite was playing on the piano airs from"Tannhäuser" and "Billee Taylor." The dining-roomwas animated by a throng of brisk, tidy, whiteyoung waiting-girls, some of whom were far toopretty to look at except from behind a thick napkin;and presently, to close this experience of the newPineville, there came along such inconceivable flannel-cakesand molasses that, forgetting industrial andsocial problems, I gave myself up to the enjoymentof a problem personal and gastric; and erelong, havingspread myself between snowy sheets, I meltedaway, as the butter between the cakes, into warmslumber, having first poured over myself a syrup ofthanksgiving.

The next morning I looked out of my windowupon a long pleasant valley, mountain-sheltered, andcrossed by the winding Cumberland; here and therecottages of a smart modern air already built or[288]building; in another direction, business blocks ofbrick and stone, graded streets and avenues andmacadamized roads; and elsewhere, saw and planingmills, coke ovens, and other evidences of commercialdevelopment. Through the open door of a churchI saw a Catholic congregation already on its knees,and the worshippers of various Protestant denominationswere looking towards their own temples.The old Pineville, happily situated farther down theriver, at the very opening of the pass, was rapidlygoing to ruins. The passion for homicide hadchanged into a passion for land speculation. Thevery man on whose account at my former visit theold Pineville had been divided into two deadly factions,whose name throughout all the region oncestood for mediæval violence, had become a real-estateagent. I was introduced to him.

Such, briefly, is the impression made by the newPineville—a new people there, new industries, newmoral atmosphere, new civilization.

The explanation of this change is not far to seek.By virtue of its commanding position as the onlyinner gateway to the North, this pass was the centralpoint of distribution for south-eastern Kentucky.Flowing into the Cumberland, on the north side ofthe mountain, is Clear Creek, and on the south side[289]is Strait Creek, the two principal streams of thisregion, and supplying water-power and drainage.Tributary to these streams are, say, half a millionacres of noble timber land; in the mountains around,the best coals, coking and domestic; elsewhere, ironores, pure brown, hematite, and carbonates; inexhaustiblequantities of limestone, blue-gray sandstone,brick clays; gushing from the mountains,abundant streams of healthful freestone water; onthe northern hill-sides, a deep loam suitable forgrass and gardens and fruits. Add to this thatthrough this water-gap, following the path of theWilderness Road, as the Wilderness Road had followedthe path of the Indian and the buffalo—throughthis water-gap would have to pass all railroadsthat should connect the North and South bymeans of that historic and ancient highway of trafficand travel.

On the basis of these facts, three summers ago afew lawyers in Louisville bought 300 acres of landnear the riotous old town of Pineville, and in thesame summer was organized the Pine MountainIron and Coal Company, which now, however, ownsabout twenty thousand acres, with a capital stock of$2,000,000. It should be noted that Southern menand native capital began this enterprise, and that althoughother stockholders are from Chicago andNew England, most of the capital remains in theState. Development has been rapidly carried forward,[290]and over five hundred thousand dollars' worthof lots have been sold the present year. It is pleasantto dwell upon the future that is promised forthis place; pleasant to hear that over six hundredacres in this pleasant valley are to be platted; thatthere are to be iron-furnaces and electric lights, concretesidewalks and a street railway, more bridges,brick-yards, and a high-school; and that the seventy-fivecoke ovens now in blast are to be increased toa thousand. Let it be put down to the credit ofthis vigorous little mountain town that it is the firstplace in that region to put Kentucky coke upon themarket, and create a wide demand for it in remotequarters—Cincinnati alone offering to take the dailyoutput of 500 ovens.

Thus the industrial and human problems are beginningto solve themselves side by side in thebackwoods of Kentucky. You begin with cokeand end with Christianity. It is the boast of Pinevillethat as soon as it begins to make its own ironit can build its houses without calling on the outsideworld for an ounce of material.[291]

III

Middlesborough! For a good many years inEngland and throughout the world the name hasstood associated with wealth and commercial greatness—theidea of a powerful city near the mouth ofthe Tees, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, whichhas become the principal seat of the English irontrade. It is therefore curious to remember that nearthe beginning of the century there stood on the siteof this powerful city four farm-houses and a ruinedshrine of St. Hilda; that it took thirty years tobring the population up to the number of one hundredand fifty-four souls; that the discovery of ironstone,as it seems to be called on that side, gave it aboom, as it is called on this; so that ten years agoit had some sixty thousand people, its hundred andthirty blast-furnaces, besides other industries, and anannual output in pig-iron of nearly two million tons.

But there is now an English Middlesborough inAmerica, which is already giving to the name anothersignificance in the stock market of Londonand among the financial journals of the realm; andif the idea of its founders is ever realized, if its presentrate of development goes on, it will in time representas much wealth in gold and iron as the oldercity.[292]

In the mere idea of the American or KentuckyMiddlesborough—for while it seems to be meant forAmerica, it is to be found in Kentucky—there issomething to arrest attention on the score of originality.That the attention of wealthy commoners,bankers, scientists, and iron-masters of Great Britain—someof them men long engaged in copper, tin,and gold mines in the remotest quarters of theglobe—that the attention of such men should befocussed on a certain spot in the backwoods of Kentucky;that they should repeatedly send over expertsto report on the combination of mineral andtimber wealth; that on the basis of such reportsthey should form themselves into a company called"The American Association, Limited," and purchase60,000 acres of land lying on each side of the CumberlandMountain, and around the meeting-point ofthe States of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky;that an allied association, called "The MiddlesboroughTown Company," should place here the site ofa city, with the idea of making it the principal seatof the iron and steel manufacture of the UnitedStates; that they should go to work to create thiscity outright by pouring in capital for every neededpurpose; that they should remove gigantic obstaclesin order to connect it with the nationalhighways of commerce; that they should thus expendsome twenty million dollars, and let it beknown that all millions further wanted were forthcoming—in[293]the idea of this there is enough to makeone pause.

As one cannot ponder the idea of the enterprisewithout being impressed with its largeness, so onecannot visit the place without being struck by theenergy with which the plan is being wrought at."It is not sufficient to know that this property possessescoal and iron of good quality and in considerablequantities, and that the deposits are situatedclose together, but that they exist in such circumstancesas will give us considerable advantages overany competitors that either now exist or whose existencecan in any way be foreseen in the nearfuture." Such were the instructions of these Englishcapitalists to their agent in America. It wascharacteristic of their race and of that method ofbusiness by which they have become the masters ofcommerce the world over. In it is the germ oftheir idea—to establish a city for the manufactureof iron and steel which, by its wealth of resources,advantages of situation, and complete development,should place competition at a disadvantage, and thusmake it impossible.

It yet remains to be seen whether this can bedone. Perhaps even the hope of it came from aninadequate knowledge of how vast a region theyhad entered, and how incalculable its wealth. Perhapsit was too much to expect that any one city,however situated, however connected, however developed,[294]should be able to absorb or even to controlthe development of that region and the distributionof its resources to all points of the land. Itsuggests the idea of a single woodpecker's hopingto carry off the cherries from a tree which a noblecompany of cats and jays and other birds werewatching; or of a family of squirrels who shouldtake up their abode in a certain hole with the ideaof eating all the walnuts in a forest. But howeverthis may turn out, these Englishmen, having onceset before themselves their aim, have never swervedfrom trying to attain it; and they are at work developingtheir city with the hope that it will bring asgreat a change in the steel market of the UnitedStates as a few years ago was made in the iron marketby the manufacture of Southern iron.

If you take up in detail the working out of theirplan of development, it is the same—no stint, nodrawing back or swerving aside, no abatement ofthe greatest intentions. They must have a site fortheir city—they choose for this site what with entiretruthfulness may be called one of the moststrategic mountain passes in American history.They must have a name—they choose that of theprincipal seat of the English iron trade. Theymust have a plant for the manufacture of steel bythe basic process—they promise it shall be thelargest in the United States. They want a tannery—itshall be the biggest in the world. A creek[295]has to be straightened to improve drainage—theyspend on it a hundred thousand dollars. They willhave their mineral resources known—they order acar to be built, stock it with an exposition of theirminerals, place it in charge of technical experts, andset it going over the country. They take a notionto establish a casino, sanitarium, and hotel—it mustcost over seven hundred thousand dollars. Themountain is in their way—that mighty wall of theCumberland Mountain which has been in the wayof the whole United States for over a hundredyears—they remove this mountain; that is, they digthrough it a great union tunnel, 3750 feet long, beginningin Kentucky, running under a corner ofVirginia, and coming out in Tennessee. Had theydone nothing but this, they would have done enoughto entitle them to the gratitude of the nation, for itis an event of national importance. It brings theSouth and the Atlantic seaboard in connection withthe Ohio Valley and the Lakes; it does more tomake the North and the South one than any othersingle thing that has happened since the close ofthe Civil War.

On the same trip that took me to Pineville fivesummers ago, I rode from that place southward towardsthe wall of Cumberland Mountain. I wishedto climb this wall at that vast depression in itknown as Cumberland Gap. It was a tranquilafternoon as I took my course over the ancient[296]Wilderness Road through the valley of the YellowCreek. Many a time since, the memory of thatride has come back to me—the forests of magnificenttimbers, open spaces of cleared land showingthe amphitheatre of hills in the purple distance, thewinding of a shadowy green-banked stream, thetranquil loneliness, the purity of primeval solitude.The flitting of a bird between one and the azuresky overhead was company, a wild flower bendingover the water's edge was friendship. Nothing brokerudely in upon the spirit of the scene but here andthere a way-side log-cabin, with its hopeless squalor,hopeless human inmates. If imagination sought relieffrom loneliness, it found it only in conjuring fromthe dust of the road that innumerable caravan of lifefrom barbarism to civilization, from the savage to thesoldier, that has passed hither and thither, leaving thewealth of nature unravished, its solitude unbroken.

In the hush of the evening and amid the silenceof eternity, I drew the rein of my tired horse on thesite of the present town. Before me in the mere distance,and outlined against the glory of the sky, theretowered at last the mighty mountain wall, showingthe vast depression of the gap—the portal to thegreatness of the commonwealth. Stretching awayin every direction was a wide plain, broken here andthere by wooded knolls, and uniting itself with gracefulcurves to the gentle slopes of the surroundingmountains. The ineffable beauty, the vast repose,[297][298][299]the overawing majesty of the historic portal, thememories, the shadows—they are never to be forgotten.

A few weeks ago I reached the same spot as thesun was rising, having come thither from Pinevilleby rail. As I stepped from the train I saw that theshadowy valley of my remembrance had been incrediblytransformed. Some idea of the plan of the newtown may be understood from the fact that CumberlandAvenue and Peterborough Avenue, intersectingeach other near the central point of it, are, whencompleted, to be severally three and a half or fourand a half miles long. There are twenty avenuesand thirty streets in all, ranging from a hundred feetto sixty feet wide. So long and broad and level arethe thoroughfares that the plan, as projected, suggestscomparison with Louisville. The valley siteitself contains some six thousand available acres.

It should be understood that the company ownsproperty on the Tennessee side of the gap, and thatat the foot of the valley, where a magnificent springgushes out, with various other mineral springs nearby—chalybeate and sulphur—it is proposed to establisha hotel, sanitarium, and casino which shallequal in sumptuousness the most noted Europeanspas.

As I stood one day in this valley, which has alreadybegun to put on the air of civilization, with itshotel and railway station and mills and pretty hometeads,[300]I saw a sight which seemed to me a completeepitome of the past and present tendencies there atwork—a summing up of the past and a prophecy ofthe future. Creeping slowly past the station—soslowly that one knows not what to compare it to unlessit be the minute-hand on the dial of a clock—creepingslowly along the Wilderness Road towardsthe ascent of Cumberland Gap, there came a mountainwagon, faded and old, with its dirty ragged canvashanging motionless, and drawn by a yoke ofmountain oxen which seemed to be moving in theirsleep. On the seat in front, with a faded shovel-hatcapping his mass of coarse tangled hair, and wearingbut two other garments—a faded shirt and fadedbreeches—sat a faded, pinched, and meagre mountainboy. The rope with which he drove his yokehad dropped between his clasped knees. He hadforgotten it; there was no need to remember it.His starved white face was kindled into an expressionof passionate hunger and excitement. In onedirty claw-like hand he grasped a small paper bag,into the open mouth of which he had thrust theother hand, as a miser might thrust his into a bagof gold. He had just bought, with a few cents, somesweetmeat of civilization which he was about for thefirst time to taste. I sat and watched him moveaway and begin the ascent to the pass. Slowly,slowly, winding now this way and now that acrossthe face of the mountain, now hidden, now in sight,[301]they went—sleeping oxen, crawling wagon, starvedmountain child. At length, as they were about disappearingthrough the gap, they passed behind acolumn of the white steam from a saw-mill that waspuffing a short distance in front of me; and, hiddenin that steam, they disappeared. It was the last ofthe mountaineers passing away before the breath ofcivilization.

Suppose now that you stand on the south side ofthe great wall of the Cumberland Mountain at CumberlandGap. You have come through the splendidtunnel beneath, or you have crawled over the summitin the ancient way; but you stand at the base onthe Tennessee side in the celebrated Powell's RiverValley.

Turn to the left and follow up this valley, keepingthe mountain on your left. You are not the first totake this course: the line of human ants used tocreep down it in order to climb over the wall at thegap. Mark how inaccessible this wall is at everyother point. Mark, also, that as you go two littleblack parallel iron threads follow you—a railroad,one of the greatest systems of the South. All alongthe mountain slope overhanging the railroad, ironore; beyond the mountain crest, timbers and coals.[302]Observe, likewise, the features of the land: waterabundant, clear, and cold; fields heavy with cornand oats; an ever-changing panorama of beautifulpictures. The farther you go the more rich andprosperous the land, the kinder the soil to grainsand gardens and orchards; bearing its burden oftimbers—walnut, chestnut, oak, and mighty beeches;lifting to the eye in the near distance cultivated hillsidesand fat meadows; stretching away into greenand shadowy valley glades; tuneful with swift, crystalstreams—a land of lovely views.

Remember well this valley, lying along the baseof the mountain wall. It has long been known asthe granary of south-west Virginia and east Tennessee;but in time, in the development of civilizationthroughout the Appalachian region, it is expected tobecome the seat of a dense pastoral population, supplyingthe dense industrial population of new miningand manufacturing towns with milk, butter, eggs,and fruit and vegetables. But for the contiguity ofsuch agricultural districts to the centres of ores andcoals, it would perhaps be impossible to establish inthese remote spots the cities necessary to developand transport their wealth.

Follow this valley up for a distance of sixty milesfrom Cumberland Gap and there pause, for you cometo the head of the valley, and you have reached anotherpass in the mountain wall. You have passedout of Tennessee into Virginia, a short distance from[303]the Kentucky border, and the mountain wall is nolonger called the Cumberland: twenty miles southwestof where you now are that mountain divided,sending forth this southern prong, called StoneMountain, and sending the rest of itself between theState line of Kentucky and Virginia, under the nameof the Big Black Mountain. Understand, also, thegeneral bearings of the spot at which you have arrived.It is in that same Alleghany system of mountains—therichest metalliferous region in the world—thenorthern section of which long ago made Pittsburgh;the southern section of which has since createdBirmingham; and the middle section of which,where you now are, is claimed by expert testimony,covering a long period of years and coming fromdifferent and wholly uninterested authorities, to bethe richest of the three.

This mountain pass not being in Kentucky, itmight be asked why in a series of articles on Kentuckyit should deserve a place. The answer isplain: not because a Kentuckian selected it as thesite of a hoped for city, or because Kentuckianshave largely developed it, or because Kentuckianslargely own it, and have stamped upon it a certainexcellent social tone; but for the reason that if theidea of its development is carried out, it will gathertowards itself a vast net-work of railways from easternKentucky, the Atlantic seaboard, the South, andthe Ohio and Mississippi valleys, which will profoundly[304]affect the inner life of Kentucky, and changeits relations to different parts of the Union.

Big Stone Gap! It does not sound very big.What is it? At a certain point of this continuationof Cumberland Mountain, called Stone Mountain,the main fork of Powell's River has in the course ofages worn itself a way down to a practical railroadpass at water-level, thus opening connection betweenthe coking coal on the north and the iron ores onthe south of the mountain. No pass that I haveever seen—except those made by the Doe River inthe Cranberry region of North Carolina—has itswild, enrapturing loveliness; towering above on eachside are the mountain walls, ancient and gray andrudely disordered; at every coign of vantage inthese, grasping their precipitous buttresses as theclaw of a great eagle might grasp the uttermostbrow of a cliff, enormous trees above trees, and amidthe trees a green lace-work of undergrowth. Below,in a narrow, winding channel piled high with bowlders,with jutting rocks and sluice-like fissures—belowand against these the river hurls itself, foaming,roaring, whirling, a long cascade of white or lucentwater. This is Big Stone Gap, and the valley intowhich the river pours its full strong current is thesite of the town. A lofty valley it is, having an elevationof 1600 feet above the sea, with mountainsgirdling it that rise to the height of 4000—a valleythe surface of which gently rolls and slopes towards[305]these encircling bases with constant relief to theeye, and spacious enough, with those opening intoit, to hold a city of the population of New York.

This mountain pass, lying in the heart of this reservedwilderness of timbers, coals, and ores, has alwayshad its slender thread of local history. It wasfrom a time immemorial a buffalo and Indian trail,leading to the head-waters of the Cumberland andKentucky rivers; during the Civil War it played itspart in certain local military exploits and personaladventures of a quixotian flavor; and of old the richfarmers of Lee County used to drive their cattlethrough it to fatten on the pea-vine and blue-grassgrowing thick on the neighboring mountain tops.But in the last twenty-five years—that quarter ofthe century which has developed in the UnitedStates an ever-growing need of iron and steel, ofhard-woods, and of all varieties of coal; a periodwhich has seen one after another of the reserve timberregions of the country thinned and exhausted—duringthe past twenty-five years attention has beenturned more and more towards the forests and thecoal-fields in the region occupied by the south AlleghanyMountain system.

It was not enough to know that at Big Stone Gapthere is a water-gap admitting the passage of a railwayon each side at water-level, and connecting contiguousworkable coals with ores; not enough repeatedlyto test the abundance, variety, and purity[306]of both of these; not enough to know that a shortdistance off a single vertical section of coal-measurerocks has a thickness above drainage level of 2500feet, the thickest in the entire Appalachian coalfieldfrom Pennsylvania to Alabama; not enoughthat from this point, by available railroad to theBessemer steel ores in the Cranberry district ofNorth Carolina, it is the shortest distance in theknown world separating such coke and such ores;not enough that there are here superabundant limestoneand water, the south fork of Powell's Riverwinding about the valley, a full, bold current, anda few miles from the town the head-waters of thissame river having a fall of 700 feet; not enoughthat near by is a rich agricultural region to supplyneeded markets, and that the valley itself has a naturaldrainage, delightful climate, and ideal beauty—allthis was not enough. It had to be known thatthe great water-gap through the mountain at thispoint, by virtue of its position and by virtue of itsrelation to other passes and valleys leading to it,necessitated, sooner or later, a concentration here ofrailroad lines for the gathering, the development,and the distribution of its resources.

From every imaginable point of view a place likethis is subject to unsparing test before it is finallyfixed upon as a town site and enters upon a processof development. Nothing would better illustrate thetremendous power with which the new South, hand[307]in hand with a new North, works with brains andcapital and science. A few years ago this place wasseventy miles from the nearest railroad. That roadhas since been built to it from the south; a secondis approaching it from a distance of a hundred andtwenty miles on the west; a third from the east; andwhen the last two come together this point will beon a great east and west trunk line, connecting theOhio and Mississippi valleys with the Atlantic seaboard.Moreover, the Legislature of Kentucky hasjust passed an act incorporating the Inter-StateTunnel Railroad Company, and empowering it tobuild an inter-State double-track highway from thehead-waters of the Cumberland and Kentucky riversto Big Stone Gap, tunnelling both the Black andCumberland Mountains, and affording a passwaynorth and south for the several railways of easternKentucky already heading towards this point. Theplan embraces two double-track toll tunnels, withdouble-track approaches between and on each sideof the tunnel, to be owned and controlled by a stockcompany which shall allow all railroads to pass onthe payment of toll. If this enterprise, involving thecost of over two million dollars, is carried out, therailroad problem at Big Stone Gap, and with it theproblem of developing the mineral wealth of southwestVirginia and south-east Kentucky, would seemto be practically solved.

That so many railroads should be approaching[308]this point from so many different directions seemsto lift it at once to a position of extraordinary importance.

But it is only a few months since the nearest onereached there; and, since little could be done towardsdevelopment otherwise, at Big Stone Gap onesees the process of town-making at an earlier stagethan at Middlesborough. Still, there are under constructionwater-works, from the pure mountain river,at an elevation of 400 feet, six miles from town, thatwill supply daily 2,500,000 gallons of water; twoiron-furnaces of a hundred tons daily capacity; anelectric-light plant, starting with fifty street arc lights,and 750 incandescent burners for residences, anda colossal hotel of 300 rooms. These may be takenas evidences of the vast scale on which developmentis to be carried forward, to say nothing of asteam street railway, belt line, lumber and brick andfinishing plants, union depot, and a coke plant modelledafter that at Connellsville. And on the wholeit may be said that already over a million dollars'worth of real estate has been sold, and that eightland, coal, and iron development companies havecentred here the development of properties aggregatingmillions in value.

It is a peculiarity of these industrial towns thusbeing founded in one of the most beautiful mountainregions of the land that they shall not merelybe industrial towns. They aim at becoming cities[309][310][311]or homes for the best of people; fresh centres towhich shall be brought the newest elements of civilizationfrom the North and South; retreats forjaded pleasure-seekers; asylums for invalids. Andtherefore they are laid out for amenities and beautyas well as industry—with an eye to using the exquisitemountain flora and park-like forests, the naturalboulevards along their watercourses, and thenatural roadways to vistas of enchanting mountainscenery. What is to be done at Middlesborough willnot be forgotten. At Big Stone Gap, in furtheranceof this idea, there has been formed a MountainPark Association, which has bought some threethousand acres of summit land a few miles fromthe town, with the idea of making it a game preserveand shooting park, adorned with a ramblingclub-house in the Swiss style of architecture. Inthis preserve is High Knob, perhaps the highestmountain in the Alleghany range, being over fourthousand feet above sea-level, the broad summit ofwhich is carpeted with blue-grass and white cloverin the midst of magnificent forest growth.[312]

Suppose once more that you stand outside theCumberland or Stone Mountain at the gap. Nowturn and follow down the beautiful Powell's Valley,retracing your course to Cumberland Gap. Passthis, continuing down the same valley, and keepingon your right the same parallel mountain wall.Mark once more how inaccessible it is at everypoint. Mark once more the rich land and prosperoustillage. Having gone about thirty miles beyondCumberland Gap, pause again. You have come toanother pass—another remarkable gateway. Youhave travelled out of Kentucky into Tennessee, andthe Cumberland Mountain has changed its nameand become Walden's Mountain, distant some fifteenmiles from the Kentucky State line.

It is necessary once more to define topographicalbearings. Running north-east and south-west isthis Cumberland Mountain, having an elevation offrom twenty-five hundred to three thousand feet.Almost parallel with it, from ten to twenty milesaway, and having an elevation of about two thousandfeet, lies Pine Mountain, in Kentucky. Inthe outer or Cumberland Mountain it has now beenseen that there are three remarkable gaps: Big[313]Stone Gap on the east, where Powell's River cutsthrough Stone Mountain; Cumberland Gap intermediate,which is not a water-gap, but a depressionin the mountain; and Big Creek Gap in the west,where Big Creek cuts through Walden's Mountain—thelast being about forty miles distant from thesecond, about ninety from the first. Now observethat in Pine Mountain there are three water-gapshaving a striking relation to the gaps in the Cumberland—thatis, behind Cumberland Gap is thepass at Pineville; behind Big Stone Gap and beyondit at the end of the mountain are the Breaksof Sandy; and behind Big Creek Gap are the Narrows,a natural water-gap connecting Tennesseewith Kentucky.

But it has been seen that the English have hadto tunnel Cumberland Mountain at Middlesboroughin order to open the valley between Pine and Cumberlandmountains to railroad connections with thesouth. It has also been seen that at Big StoneGap it has been found necessary to plan for a vasttunnel under Big Black Mountain, and also underPine Mountain, in order to establish north andsouth connections for railroads, and control the developmentof south-east Kentucky and south-westVirginia. But now mark the advantage of the situationat Big Creek Gap: a water-gap at railroadlevel giving entrance from the south, and seventeenmiles distant a corresponding water-gap at railroad[314]level giving exit from the south and entrance fromthe north. There is thus afforded a double naturalgateway at this point, and at this point alone—aninestimable advantage. Here, then, is discovered athird distinct centre in Cumberland Mountain wherethe new industrial civilization of the South is expectedto work. All the general conditions elsewherestated are here found present—timbers,coals, and ores, limestone, granite, water, scenery,climate, flora; the beauty is the same, the wealthnot less.

With a view to development, a company hasbought up and owns in fee 20,000 acres of coallands and some seven thousand of iron ore in thevalley and along the foot-hills on the southernslope of the mountain. They have selected andplatted as a town site over sixteen hundred acres ofbeautiful valley land, lying on both sides of BigCreek where it cuts through the mountain, 1200feet above the sea-level. But here again one comesupon the process of town-making at a still earlierstage of development. That is, the town existsonly on paper, and improvement has not yet begun.Taken now, it is in the stage that Middlesborough,or Big Stone Gap, was once in. So that it shouldnot be thought any the less real because it is rudimentaryor embryonic. A glance at the wealthtributary to this point will soon dispel doubt thathere in the future, as at the other strategic mountain[315]passes of the Cumberland, is to be establishedan important town.

Only consider that the entire 20,000 acres ownedby the Big Creek Gap Company are underlain bycoal, and that the high mountains between the Pineand Cumberland contain vertical sections of greaterthickness of coal-measure rocks than are to be foundanywhere else in the vast Appalachian field; thatWalnut Mountain, on the land of the company—thewestern continuation of the Black Mountain andthe Log Mountain of Kentucky—is 3300 feet abovesea, and has 2000 feet of coal-measures abovedrainage; and that already there has been developedthe existence of six coals of workable thicknessabove drainage level, five of them underlyingthe entire 20,000 acres, except where small portionshave been cut away by the streams.

The lowest coal above drainage—the Sharpe—presentsan outcrop about twenty feet above thebed of the stream, and underlies the entire purchase.It has long been celebrated for domesticuse in the locality. An entry driven in about sixtyfeet shows a twelve-inch cannel-coal with a five-inchsoft shale, burning with a brilliant flame, and muchused in Powell's Valley; also a bituminous coal offorty-three-inch thickness, having a firm roof, cheaplyminable, and yielding a coke of over 93 per cent.pure carbon.

The next coal above is a cannel-coal having an[316]outcrop on the Middle Fork of Big Creek of thirty-sixinches, and on the north slope of the mountains,six miles off, of thirty-eight inches, showing a persistentbed throughout.

Above this is the Douglass coal, an entry of fortyfeet into which shows a thickness of fifty inches,with a good roof, and on the northern slope of themountains, at Cumberland River, a thickness of sixtyinches. This is a gas coal of great excellence, yieldingalso a coke, good, but high in sulphur. Abovethe Douglass is an unexplored section of greatthickness, showing coal stains and coals exposed,but undeveloped.

The uppermost coal discovered, and the highestopened in Tennessee—the Walnut Mountain coal—isa coking variety of superior quality, fifty-eightinches thick, and though lying near the top of themountain, protected by a sandstone roof. It is minableat a low cost, admirable for gas, and is herefound underlying some two thousand acres.

As to the wealth of iron ores, it has been saidthat the company owns about seven thousand acresin the valley and along the southern slopes of CumberlandMountain. There is a continuous outcropof the soft red fossiliferous, or Clinton, iron ore, tenmiles long, nowhere at various outcrops less thansixty inches thick, of exceptional richness and purity,well located for cheap mining, and adjacent tothe coal beds. Indeed, where it crosses Big Creek[317]at the gap, it is only a mile from the coking coal.Lying from one to two hundred feet above thedrainage level of the valley, where a railroad is tobe constructed, and parallel to this road at a distanceof a few hundred feet, this ore can be put oncars and delivered to the furnaces of Big CreekGap at an estimated cost of a dollar a ton. Of redore two beds are known to be present.

Parallel and near to the red fossiliferous, therehas been developed along the base of CumberlandMountain a superior brown ore, the Limonite—thesame as that used in the Low Moor, Longdale, andother furnaces of the Clifton Forge district. This—theOriskany—has been traced to within ten milesof the company's lands, and there is every reason tobelieve that it will be developed on them. At thebeginning of this article it was stated that iron ofsuperior quality was formerly made at Big CreekGap, and found a ready market throughout centralKentucky.

Parallel with the ore and easily quarriable is thesubcarboniferous limestone, one thick stratum ofwhich contains 98 per cent. of carbonate of lime;so that, with liberal allowance for the cost of crudematerial, interest, wear and tear, it is estimated thatiron can here be made at as low a cost as anywherein the United States, and that furnaces will havean advantage in freight in reaching the markets ofthe Ohio Valley and the farther South. Moreover,[318]the various timbers of this region attain a perfectionseldom equalled, and by a little clearing out of thestream, logs can be floated at flood tides to the Clinchand Tennessee rivers. To-day mills are shippingthese timbers from Boston to the Rocky Mountains.

Situated in one of the most beautiful of valleys,1200 feet above sea-level, surrounded by park-likeforests and fertile valley lands, having an abundanceof pure water and perfect drainage, withiron ore only a mile from coke, and a double water-gapgiving easy passage for railroads, Big CreekGap develops peculiar strength and possibilities ofimportance, when its relation is shown to those citieswhich will be its natural markets, and to the systemsof railroads of which it will be the inevitable outlet.Within twenty miles of it lie three of the greatestrailroad systems of the South. It is but thirty-eightmiles from Knoxville, and eight miles of low-graderoad, through a fertile blue-grass valley, peopled byintelligent, prosperous farmers, will put it in connectionwith magnetic and specular ores for the makingof steel, or with the mountain of Bessemer ore atCranberry. Its coke is about three hundred milesnearer to the Sheffield and Decatur furnaces thanthe Pocahontas coke which is now being shipped tothem. It is nearer St. Louis and Chicago than theirpresent sources of supply. It is the nearest point tothe great coaling station for steamships now buildingat Brunswick. And it is one of the nearest bases[319]of supply for Pensacola, which in turn is the nearestport of supply for Central and South America.

No element of wealth or advantage of positionseems lacking to make this place one of the controllingpoints of that vast commercial movement whichis binding the North and the South together, andchanging the relation of Kentucky to both, by makingit the great highway of railway connection, thefresh centre of manufacture and distribution, and thelasting fountain-head of mineral supply.

Attention is thus briefly directed to that line oftowns which are springing up, or will in time springup, in the mountain passes of the Cumberland, andare making the backwoods of Kentucky the fore-frontof a new civilization. Through these three passes inthe outer wall of Cumberland Mountain, and throughthat pass at Pineville in the inner wall behind CumberlandGap—through these four it is believed thatthere must stream the railroads carrying to theSouth its timbers and coals; to the North its timbers,coal, and iron; and carrying to both from thesetowns, as independent centres of manufacture, allthose products the crude materials of which exist ineconomic combinations on the spot.[320]

It is idle to say that all these places cannot becomeimportant. The competition will be keen, andthe fittest will survive; but all these are fit to survive,each having advantages of its own. Big StoneGap lies so much nearer the East and the Atlanticseaboard; Big Creek Gap so much nearer the Westand the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and the Lakes;Cumberland Gap and Pineville so much nearer anintermediate region.

But as the writer has stated, it is the human,not the industrial, problem to be solved by this developmentthat possessed for him the main interest.One seems to see in the perforation and breaking upof Cumberland Mountain an event as decisive of thedestiny of Kentucky as though the vast wall hadfallen, destroying the isolation of the State, bringinginto it the new, and letting the old be scattered untilit is lost. But while there is no space here to dealwith those changes that are rapidly passing overKentucky life and obliterating old manners and customs,old types of character and ideals of life, oldvirtues and graces as well as old vices and horrors—thereis a special topic too closely connected withthe foregoing facts not to be considered: the effect ofthis development upon the Kentucky mountaineers.

The buying up of the mountain lands has unsettleda large part of these people. Already there hasbeen formed among them a class of tenants payingrent and living in their old homes. But in the main[321]there are three movements among them. Some desertthe mountains altogether, and descend to theBlue-grass Region with a passion for farming. Oncounty-court days in blue-grass towns it has beenpossible of late to notice this peculiar type minglingin the market-places with the traditional type of blue-grassfarmer. There is thus going on, especiallyalong the border counties, a quiet interfusion of thetwo human elements of the Kentucky highlanderand the Kentucky lowlander, so long distinct inblood, physique, history, and ideas of life. To lessextent, the mountaineers go farther west, beginninglife again beyond the Mississippi.

A second general tendency among them is to beabsorbed by the civilization that is springing up inthe mountains. They flock to these towns, keepstore, are shrewd and active speculators in real estate,and successful developers of small capital. Thefirst business house put up in the new Pineville wasbuilt by a mountaineer.

But the third, and, as far as can be learned, themost general movement among them is to retire atthe approach of civilization to remoter regions of themountains, where they may live without criticism orobservation their hereditary, squalid, unambitious,stationary life. But to these retreats they must intime be followed, therefrom dislodged, and again setgoing. Thus a whole race of people are being scattered,absorbed, civilized. You may go far before[322]you will find a fact so full of consequences to thefuture of the State.

Within a few years the commonwealth of Kentuckywill be a hundred years old. All in all, itwould seem that with the close of its first centurythe old Kentucky passes away; and that the secondcentury will bring in a new Kentucky—new in manyways, but new most of all on account of the civilizationof the Cumberland.

FLUTE AND VIOLIN,

And Other Kentucky Tales and Romances. ByJamesLane Allen. With Illustrations. Post 8vo, Cloth,Ornamental, $1 50.

The above work is for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers,postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico,on receipt of the price.[324]

BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by thepublishers, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, orMexico, on receipt of price.

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	PAGE
Old Stone Homestead	Frontispiece
Blue-grass	5
Sheep in Woodland Pasture	9
Negro Cabins	15
Cattle in a Blue-grass Pasture	21
Hemp Field	25
Tobacco Patch	29
Harrodsburg Pike	33
A Spring-house	41
The Mammy	59
The Cook	65
Chasing the Rabbit	77
The Preache	81
Wet Goods for Sale—Bowling Green	91
Concluding a Bargain	93
Court-house Square, Lexington, Kentucky	97
The "Tickler"	101
The Quack-doctor	105
Auctioning a Jack	109
Lords of the Soil	113
Swapping Horses	117[ix]
Gentlemen of Leisure	121
Corn-husking	131
Militia Muster	135
Products of the Soil	139
Cattle at Lexington Fair	143
Harness Horses	147
The Modern Tourney	151
The Judge's Stand—The Finish	155
A Dinner-party	157
The Race-course—The Finish	159
Stallions	163
Mules	165
Office of the Father Prior	177
Within the Gates	181
A Fortnightly Shave	187
The Garden	197
Old Ferry at Point Burnside	233
"Damn me if them ain't the damnedest beans I ever seen!"	237
Moonrise on Cumberland Ridge	239
Cumberland Falls	243
Native Types	247
Interior of a Mountaineer's Home	251
Mountain Courtship	255
A Family Burying-ground	259
A Mountaineer Dame	261
Old Corn-mill at Pineville	265
Map Showing Mountain Passes of the Cumberland	277
Cumberland Gap	281
Ford on the Cumberland	297
Kentucky River from High Bridge	309

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The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, and Other Kentucky Articles

THE BLUE-GRASSREGION OF KENTUCKYAND OTHER KENTUCKY ARTICLESBY JAMES LANE ALLEN. ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORKHARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERSM DCCC XCII

PREFACE

CONTENTS