A whisper and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, They climb up into my turret O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me: They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, And there will I keep you forever, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, He It is a patriarchal life. The man of the house is lord. takes no orders from anybody at home or abroad. Whether he shall work or visit or roam the woods with dog and gun is nobody's affair but his own. About family matters he consults with his wife, but in the end his word is law. If Madame be a bit shrewish he is likely to tolerate it as natural to the weaker vessel; but if she should go too far he checks her with a curt "Shet up!" and the incident is closed. "The woman," as every wife is called, has her kingdom within the house, and her husband seldom meddles with its affairs. Now and then he may grumble "A woman's allers findin' somethin' to do that a man can't see no sense in; but, then, the Lord made women fussy over trifles so why bother about it?" The mountain farmer's wife is not only a household drudge, but a field-hand as well. She helps to plant, hoes corn, gathers fodder, sometimes even plows or splits rails. It is the commonest of sights for a woman to be awkwardly hacking up firewood with a dull axe. When her husband leaves home on a journey, he is not likely to have laid in wood for the stove or hearth; so she and the children must drag from the hillsides whatever dead timber they can find. Outside the towns no hat is lifted to maid or wife. A man would consider it belittled his dignity. At table, if women be seated at all, the dishes are passed first to the men; and generally the wife stands by and serves. There is no conscious discourtesy in such customs; but they show an indifference to woman's weakness, a disregard for her finer nature, that are real and deep-seated in the mountaineer. To him she is little more than a sort of superior domestic animal. The chivalric regard for women that characterized our pioneers of the Far West is altogether lacking in the habits of the backwoodsman of Appalachia. And yet it is seldom that a highland woman complains of her lot. She knows no other. From early times the men of her race have been warriors, hunters, herdsmen, clearers of During one of his camping trips, Horace Kephart became interested in the mountaineers in Tennessee and Kentucky. These primitive people are pure Anglo-Saxon Americans, many of whom can trace their ancestry in this country for two hundred years. From them came such leaders as Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Abraham Lincoln. Kephart's interest in the descendants of the men who first carved out homes in the wilderness led him to write Our Southern Highlanders, from which this selection is taken. Reading Directions. — A good silent reader is one who reads understandingly at a fairly rapid rate, neither dawdling nor skimming. It is helpful to find out now and then just how rapidly you can get the thought from a printed page. Use this selection as a test. Do not start to read until you are told to begin. When the signal is given, start and read for exactly three minutes. Note the word where you are when the signal to stop is given; then read the rest of the selection and test your grasp of the thought by answering the questions at the end. There is little The average mountain home is a happy one. worry and less fret. Nobody's nerves are on edge. Our highlander views the events of life with the calmness and tolerant good-humor of Bret Harte's Southwesterner, "to whom cyclones, famine, drought, floods, pestilence, and savages were things to be accepted, and whom disaster, if it did not stimulate, certainly did not frighten." 1 It is a patriarchal life. The man of the house is lord. He takes no orders from anybody at home or abroad. Whether he shall work or visit or roam the woods with dog and gun is nobody's affair but his own. About family matters he consults with his wife, but in the end his word is law. If Madame be a bit shrewish he is likely to tolerate it as natural to the weaker vessel; but if she should go too far he checks her with a curt "Shet up!" and the incident is closed. "The woman," as every wife is called, has her kingdom within the house, and her husband seldom meddles with its affairs. Now and then he may grumble "A woman's allers findin' somethin' to do that a man can't see no sense in; but, then, the Lord made women fussy over trifles so why bother about it?" The mountain farmer's wife is not only a household drudge, but a field-hand as well. She helps to plant, hoes corn, gathers fodder, sometimes even plows or splits rails. It is the commonest of sights for a woman to be awkwardly hacking up firewood with a dull axe. When her husband leaves home on a journey, he is not likely to have laid in wood for the stove or hearth; so she and the children must drag from the hillsides whatever dead timber they can find. A man Outside the towns no hat is lifted to maid or wife. would consider it belittled his dignity. At table, if women be seated at all, the dishes are passed first to the men; and generally the wife stands by and serves. There is no conscious discourtesy in such customs; but they show an indifference to woman's weakness, a disregard for her finer nature, that are real and deep-seated in the mountaineer. To him she is little more than a sort of superior domestic animal. The chivalric regard for women that characterized our pioneers of the Far West is altogether lacking in the habits of the backwoodsman of Appalachia. And yet it is seldom that a highland woman complains of her lot. She knows no other. From early times the men of her race have been warriors, hunters, herdsmen, clearers of forests, and their women have toiled in the fields. Indeed she would scarcely respect her husband if he did not lord it over her and cast upon her the menial tasks. It is "manners" for a woman to drudge and obey. All respectable wives do that. And they stay at home, never visiting or going anywhere without first asking their husband's consent. Mountain women marry early, many of them at fourteen or fifteen, and nearly all before they are twenty. Large families are the rule, seven to ten children being considered normal, while fifteen is not an uncommon number; but the infant death-rate is high. The children have few toys other than rag dolls, broken bits of crockery for "play-parties," and such "ridey-hosses" as they make for themselves. They play few games, but rather frisk about like young colts without aim or method. Every mountain child has at least one dog for a playfellow, and sometimes a pet pig is equally familiar. In many districts there is not enough level land for a ballground. An amusement of the small boys is "rocking" (throwing stones at marks or at each other), in which rather doubtful pastime they become singularly expert. Most mountaineers are indulgent, over-indulgent, parents. The oft-heard threat, "I'll w'ar ye out with a hick'ry!" is seldom carried out. The boys, especially, grow up with little restraint beyond their own natural sense of filial duty. Little children are allowed to eat and drink anything they want -green fruit, adulterated candy, fresh cider, no matter what; and fatal consequences are not rare. Julian Ralph tells of a man on Bullskin Creek, who, explaining why his child died, said that "No one couldn't make her take no medicine; she just wouldn't take it; she was a Baker through and through, and you never could make a Baker do nothin' he didn't want to!" The mountaineers have a native fondness for music and dancing. The harmony of "part singing" is unknown, and both men and women sing in a jerky treble. Most of their |