"Then they started in to improve right after the war, did they?"
The Kentuckian shook his head negatively.
"No," he said, "at first they were far worse off than befo' because the Freedman's Bureau an' the carpet-baggers made trouble right an' lef'. The No'th had a fine chance, but the carpet-baggers were jes' blind to everythin' excep' the negro, an' the po' white was jes' as shabbily treated by the No'th as he had be'n by the South. Now that everybody is seein' that yo' can't make a negro jes' the same as a white man by givin' him a vote, thar's a chance fo' the po' white. I reckon the 'Cracker' as a 'Cracker' is goin' to be extinct pretty soon, an' the South is goin' to be proud o' the stock it once despised. Atlanta is the fastes' growin' city in the South, an' Atlanta is jes' full o' men whose folks weren't much more'n 'Crackers.' The po' white, in a few years, is goin' to be only a memory like the backwoodsman o' the time o' Dan'l Boone."
"That promises well for the South," said Hamilton.
"The boom o' the South is jes' beginnin'," the old man said, "an' if you're goin' to do census work this next year, yo' jes' watch the figures an' see whar the old South comes in. It's a pity you're goin' back to Wash'n'ton to-morrow, as I think yo' ought to see more o' this country befo' yo' go."
"I'd like to, ever so much, Uncle Eli," the boy answered, as he got up from the step and started for the big loft where he slept with the mountaineer's two sons, "but, even if I don't get a chance, I've learned a lot from you about the folk on the mountains and about the South generally."
The mountaineer nodded a good-night as the boy disappeared.
"Now thar," he said to his wife, who had been knitting stockings during the latter part of the conversation, and occasionally interjecting a word, "thar is a boy that is really achin' to know things. I wish Rube and Eph were more like him."
"Nothin' but hounds an' vittles worries them," the woman replied sharply, "but they an't none like city boys, an' I'd ruther have 'em the way they air than to come pesterin' with questions like Hamilton does you. I don't set any sort o' stock in it, an' I don't encourage him in sech nonsense."
The big Kentuckian smiled, and filled his corn-cob leisurely as he turned the talk to other things.