A Mountain Europa | Page 6

a banjo unstrung, a
tennis-racket, and a blazer of startling colors. Plainly they were relics of
German student life, and the odd contrast they made with the rough
wall and ceiling suggested a sharp change in the fortunes of the young
worker beneath. Scarcely six months since he had been suddenly
summoned home from Germany. The reason was vague, but having
read of recent American failures, notably in Wall Street, he knew what
had happened. Reaching New York, he was startled by the fear that his
mother was dead, so gloomy was the house, so subdued his sister's
greeting, and so worn and sad his father's face. The trouble, however,
was what he had guessed, and he had accepted it with quiet resignation.
The financial wreck seemed complete; but one resource, however, was
left. Just after the war Clayton's father had purchased mineral lands in
the South, and it was with the idea of developing these that he had
encouraged the marked scientific tastes of his son, and had sent him to
a German university. In view of his own disaster, and the fact that a
financial tide was swelling southward, his forethought seemed an
inspiration. To this resource Clayton turned eagerly; and after a few
weeks at home, which were made intolerable by straitened
circumstances, and the fancied coldness of friend and acquaintance, he
was hard at work in the heart of the Kentucky mountains.

The transition from the careless life of a student was swift and bitter; it
was like beginning a new life with a new identity, though Clayton
suffered less than he anticipated. He had become interested from the
first. There was nothing in the pretty glen, when he came, but a
mountaineer's cabin and a few gnarled old apple-trees, the roots of
which checked the musical flow of a little stream. Then the air was
filled with the tense ring of hammer and saw, the mellow echoes of
axes, and the shouts of ox-drivers from the forests, indignant groans
from the mountains, and a little town sprang up before his eyes, and
cars of shining coal wound slowly about the mountainside.
Activity like this stirred his blood. Busy from dawn to dark, he had no
time to grow miserable. His work was hard, to be sure, but it made rest
and sleep a luxury, and it had the new zest of independence; he even
began to take in it no little pride when he found himself an essential
part of the quick growth going on. When leisure came, he could take to
woods filled with unknown birds, new forms of insect life, and strange
plants and flowers. With every day, too, he was more deeply stirred by
the changing beauty of the mountains hidden at dawn with white mists,
faintly veiled through the day with an atmosphere that made him think
of Italy, and enriched by sunsets of startling beauty. But strongest of all
was the interest he found in the odd human mixture about him-the
simple, good-natured darkies who slouched past him, magnificent in
physique and picturesque with rags; occasional foreigners just from
Castle Garden, with the hope of the New World still in their faces; and
now and then a gaunt mountaineer stalking awkwardly in the rear of the
march toward civilization. Gradually it had dawned upon him that this
last, silent figure, traced through Virginia, was closely linked by blood
and speech with the common people of England, and, moulded perhaps
by the influences of feudalism, was still strikingly unchanged; that now
it was the most distinctively national remnant on American soil, and
symbolized the development of the continent, and that with it must go
the last suggestions of the pioneers, with their hardy physiques, their
speech, their manners and customs, their simple architecture and simple
mode of life. It was soon plain to him, too, that a change was being
wrought at last-the change of destruction. The older mountaineers,
whose bewildered eyes watched the noisy signs of an unintelligible

civilization, were passing away. Of the rest, some, sullen and restless,
were selling their homesteads and following the spirit of their
forefathers into a new wilderness; others, leaving their small farms in
adjacent valleys to go to ruin, were gaping idly about the public works,
caught up only too easily by the vicious current of the incoming tide. In
a century the mountaineers must be swept away, and their ignorance of
the tragic forces at work among them gave them an unconscious pathos
that touched Clayton deeply.
As he grew to know them, their historical importance yielded to a
genuine interest in the people themselves. They were densely ignorant,
to be sure; but they were natural, simple, and hospitable. Their sense of
personal worth was high, and their democracy-or aristocracy, since
there was no