From what I have already said of the numbers who dined and lodged with him, it will be seen that he had very enlarged ideas of the capacity of his house. An enthusiastic neighbor, who was about as rough a looking specimen of a backwoodsman as I ever saw, stepped forward and said:
"I have room enough for your horses and you too. I should be glad to have you all go with me."
The presiding elder went with him, but the preacher and the class-leader were claimed by others.
Before leaving the grounds, it was arranged between us that we should all meet at a designated place in the morning, and I would travel with them to the conference, to which I was thus far on my way. Though not an Arminian, but a Calvinist, though not a Methodist, but a Presbyterian, I knew that a cordial welcome awaited me as a representative of the American Bible Society. I knew that, in addition to this official welcome, I should receive the warm greetings of brethren beloved, with whom I had traveled many hundreds of miles over their "circuits," and mingled in all the novel, interesting, and eventful scenes in their wild itinerant life. When I met the elder the next morning, I asked him the nature of the very ample accommodations that were offered him. He said he slept upon the floor, but he did not undertake to count the number who shared it with him.
So ended the various incidents of our basket-meeting; but the recollection of it has been among the pleasant memories of my life in the Brush.
SOME EXPLANATORY WORDS.
Perhaps some statement in explanation of this "rough" but abounding hospitality of the people in the Brush is demanded in justice to those persons and places whose hospitality would seem to suffer in the contrast. I might enumerate many circumstances connected with life in a wild, unsettled country that will occur to most readers as the cause of this abounding hospitality; but it seems to me that the chief reason is the fact that meat, bread, and all their provisions, excepting groceries, cost them so very little. They estimate what they can use scarcely more than the water taken from their springs. Beef, pork, and bread cost them almost nothing. Their cattle run at large, and their free range includes thousands of acres of unoccupied lands. They grow and increase in this manner with but little attention or care. The hogs find their food in the woods the greater part of the year, and in the fall they fatten upon the nuts or "mast." The oak, hickory, beech, and other trees that abound in these extensive forests afford vast quantities of these nuts, which these people claim for their own hogs, whoever may own the land. I knew a man that owned several thousand acres of these lands, who sold the nuts on the ground to a "speculator," who drove his hogs upon the tract of land to eat them. But the residents were incensed at this trespass upon their immemorial privileges, and secretly shot and killed so many of these hogs that their owner was glad to escape with any part of his drove, and leave them possessors of the "mast." The method by which these people retain and recognize their ownership in the hogs that run at large and mingle together in the woods was quite new to me. The owner looks carefully after the young pigs, calls them, and feeds them, for some days or weeks, until they know his voice, and will come at his call. Whatever kind of a hoot, scream, or yell it is, they learn to associate it with their food, and run at the sound. Sometimes the owner merely blows a horn. If a hundred hogs belonging to half a dozen men are feeding together in the woods, and their owners sound their calls from different hills, the hogs will separate and rush in the direction of the sound to which they have been accustomed. In this manner these people secure for their families, with but little trouble, the most abundant supply of bacon. The corn, which furnishes the most of their bread, is raised with but little labor. After it is planted it is plowed or cultivated, and "laid by" without any hoeing at all. If they have enough to feed their hogs a short time before killing them, they do not gather this, but turn the hogs into the corn-fields, and let them help themselves. The drought that caused the famine in Kansas, in the early history of that State, extended over this region. As the breadth of ground planted here was so much greater, the results were not so sad. But there was a scarcity of corn such as the people had never known before. The price advanced from twenty and twenty-five cents a bushel to a dollar and upward, and many were unable to procure enough to make bread for their families. But the "mast" was abundant that fall, and there was no lack of bacon. I visited many families that lived almost entirely on meat. During the winter I met a physician who told me that in his ride among the hills he found whole families afflicted with a disease that was entirely new in his experience. Upon consulting his books, he found it was scurvy, the result of living upon little besides bacon.
With this usually abundant supply of food, which on account of the bad roads and the distance from market has but little pecuniary value; with houses and accommodations such as I have described; with but few books, newspapers, and other kinds of reading; with a dearth of the excitements and amusements of the outside world, it is not so strange or wonderful that they are eager for pleasures and enjoyments that involve these displays of hospitality.
I know that my statements often appear incredible to many of my readers. But I trust that, after these "explanatory words," I shall not tax too largely either the faith of my readers or my own character for veracity.