The Boy with the U.S. Census | Page 4

o' swings the women around. An' up
hyeh in the mount'ns, same as everywhar else, I reckon, the idees o' the
women make a pile o' difference."
"But I should have thought the women would always have been against
the feuds," said Hamilton.
"Yo'd think so, but they weren't. They helped to keep up the grudges a

whole lot."
"Aunt Ab hasn't changed much," volunteered the lad.
"She hasn't for a fact. Ab is powerful sot. She holds the grudge against
the Howkles in the ol' style. But the feelin' is dyin' out fast, an' soon it'll
be like history,--only jes' read of in books."
"What I never could see," remarked Hamilton, "was what started it all.
It isn't as if the people in the mountains had come from some part of the
world where vendettas and that sort of thing had been going on for
generations. There must have been some kind of reason for it in this
section of the country. Feuds don't spring up just for nothing."
"Thar was a while once we had a powerful clever talker up hyeh," the
Kentuckian answered, "actin' as schoolmaster for a few weeks. I reckon
he'd offered to substitute jes' to get a chance to see for himself what life
in the mount'ns was like. He was writin' a book about it. We got right
frien'ly, an' he knew he was always welcome hyeh, an' one day I asked
him jes' that question. It was shortly befo' he lef' an' I wanted to know
what he thought about us all up hyeh."
The mountaineer leaned back in his chair and chuckled with evident
enjoyment of the recollection.
"I jes' put the question to him," he said, "in the mildes' way, an' he
started right in to talk. Thar was no stoppin' him, an' I couldn'
remember one-half o' what he said. But I reckon he had it about right."
"How did he explain the feuds, Uncle Eli?" asked the boy.
"Wa'al," said the mountaineer, with a short laugh, "he begun by sayin'
we were savages."
"Savages?"
"Not jes' with war-paint an' tomahawk, yo' understan'," continued the
old man, enjoying the boy's astonishment, "but uncivilized an' wild.

Thar an't any finer stock in the world, he said, than the mount'neers o'
the Ridge, clar down to Tennessee, an' he said, too, that they were o' the
good old English breed, not foreigners like are comin' in now."
"That's right enough," Hamilton agreed, "and, what's more, they were
gentlemen of good birth, most of them; there was not much of the
peasant in the early colonists."
"So this author chap said. But he explained that was the very reason
they got so wild."
"I don't see that," objected Hamilton, "and I certainly don't see where
the 'savage' idea comes in."
"Wa'al, he said that when you slid down from a high place it was harder
to climb back than if the fall had b'n small. An' that's why it's so hard
for those who have gone down,--they can see the depth o' the fall."
Hamilton, who was of an argumentative turn of mind, would have
protested at this, but the old mountaineer proceeded.
"When the pioneers settled in the mount'ns they kind o' stuck. Those
that went on, down into the Blue Grass region, went boomin' right
ahead, but those that stayed in the mount'ns had no chance."
"I don't see why not?" objected the boy.
"They were jes' cut off from everywhar. We are to-day, for that matter.
When a place gets settled, an' starts to try an' raise somethin' to sell, the
product has got to be taken to market. But thar was no railroad up in the
mount'ns. Children were easy to raise, an' a population grew up in a
hurry, but the land was too poor for good farmin', the roads were too
bad for takin' corn to market, an' thar was no way o' gettin' to a town."
"You are pretty well cut off," said Hamilton.
"We were more so then," the mountaineer said. "An' so, while all the
country 'round was advancin' up in the mount'ns, fifty years ago, we

were livin' jes' like pioneers. An' some, not bein' able to keep up the
strain, fell back."
"So it really isn't the fault of the mountaineers at all," cried the boy,
"but because they were sort of marooned."
"It was unfortunate," replied the old man, "but it really was our own
fault. If the mount'n country was worth developin', we should have
developed it; if not, we should have left."
"I've often wondered why you didn't, Uncle Eli," said Hamilton.
"Yo' must remember," the Kentuckian said, "that the mount'neers are a
most independent lot. They want to be independent, an' up hyeh, every
man is his own master. But,