Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway

by Effie Price Gladding

Winchester is a very old town, with a fascination that grows upon one. It is a simple little place, with a certain placidity and quiet that are very soothing. Here is the Winchester Inn with its wide porches and high ceilings. And here is Mrs. Nancy Cobles's private boarding-house, whose very appearance breathes of homelike comfort and Southern hospitality. The Winchester Inn announces that it is "refurnished, refitted, reland-lorded."

In Winchester is the little old building used as a surveyor's office by young Washington when he was working for Lord Fairfax. Here is fine old Christ Church, endowed by Thomas, Lord Fairfax, whose ashes rest underneath the church.

In Winchester I begin to see very interesting and perfectly clear traces of old Colonial days. There are quaint old names on the grave stones; "Judith," "Mary Ann," "Parthenia." Here is the old English name of Fauntleroy. And here are old houses with fan-lights over the doors.

It is in Winchester, too, that I begin to sense the tragedy and awfulness of the Civil War, as traced by many a sad inscription on many a gravestone. Hundreds of Southern dead are sleeping in the Winchester cemeteries. There are monuments to many unknown dead. "Unknown dead from Winchester battlefield," "Unknown dead from Cedar Creek battlefield," and so on. There are monuments to "the brothers Ashby," and to "the Patton brothers." How young are the ages given on many of these stones! Nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine.

Our most interesting call in Winchester is upon a lady who is the owner and manager of a farm of 8000 apple trees, 7000 of which she has set out herself within the past five years, "every tree in a dynamited hole, every tree pruned by a government expert." She tells us that all she knows of apple culture she has learned by a careful study of government pamphlets. Her orchard is about five miles from town, and she drives out daily from her pleasant home. She tells us that her apples are sent to Jersey City and there kept in cold storage. Late in the season she sells them, getting sometimes as high as $7.50 a barrel toward the end of the winter. As we talk with her we wonder why it is that more women do not go in for apple culture. Surely it is a delightful vocation, clean, healthful, invigorating, and profitable.

Our friend tells us laughingly that so far as her experience goes, negro servants are "still proving to their former owners that they are free." She relates an experience with a young negro maid, who after eight months of happy service with her, during which time she had the best of training, suddenly left her. She took a new position just across the street and for exactly the same wages as her old situation had given her. When her former mistress asked her why it was that she was leaving, she giggled and said demurely, "I mus' do de bes' I kin fo' myse'f."

From Winchester we drive to Staunton over a fine road. From the fine country about Winchester, dotted with beautiful orchards, down through Harrisonburg in the midst of great grain and hay farms, we are passing through the famous Shenandoah Valley. We see it at a disadvantage, for the months of dry weather have burned the fields brown and dry and increased the dust of the roads. But it is beautiful still, a fair and prosperous farming country. We pass through Harrisonburg on court day, and the town is filled with farmers who make of this day a general market day.

As we approach Staunton we come again into orchard country. We have been passing through many miles of farms devoted to grain. On the left, as one enters Staunton, is Chilton Hall, standing high above the town. Chilton Hall, kept by a woman, is a fine new private house, transformed into a tourist hostel. It looks most attractive. We go on into Staunton as we wish to be in the heart of the town. We establish ourselves very comfortably for a few days at "The Shenandoah," also kept by a woman. Here we have for a very moderate price a room with a private bath. We enjoy fresh milk and cream, home-made butter, jams, and jellies, and all the good things of a hospitable Virginia table. We visit the famous Mary Baldwin Seminary, an exquisitely kept institution. We also see the Episcopal Church school in its fine old building, Stuart Hall, and we walk past the Presbyterian manse where President Wilson was born. We visit the fine cemetery and read the sad inscriptions on the head stones. One, erected to a young officer of thirty years, reads, "Here lies a gallant soldier," and adds that he fell fighting "in the great battle of Manassas." In this cemetery there are 870 Southern dead whose names are given. There are also about 700 soldiers lying here, "not recorded by name." The inscription speaks of them as "unknown yet well known." There are quaint names of women on the old stones here, as in Winchester; "Johanah," and "Edmonia." And there are old English names; as Barclay, Warwick, Peyton, Prettyman, Eskridge, and Darrow.

During our stay in Staunton we take a day for a drive to the Natural Bridge. It is charming country through which we drive, growing more broken and wooded as we go farther south. We find the road bumpy and dusty, but not at all impracticable. We have our luncheon with us, and after paying a somewhat exorbitant fee of one dollar apiece for entrance to the natural park which includes the Bridge scenery, we walk along the ravine beside the little river, to the mighty arch of the Bridge itself. It is a noble span of rock, of an enormous thickness, on so grand a scale that it is difficult to realize its height and width. We have our luncheon beside the stream in the forest, and drive back to Staunton. The wooded Virginia hills and the fields are beautiful in the afternoon sunlight.

In returning to Staunton we stop in Lexington to see the old cemetery where Stonewall Jackson lies buried, and where his statue looks out from a terrace over the open country. We also visit the very beautiful campus of the Washington and Lee University, and the hilltop situation of the famous Virginia Military Institute, where another statue of Jackson stands in commanding position. Were there time, one could linger for hours on the University campus and in the old Lexington cemetery. I find a very interesting inscription on a simple stone, which reads thus: