CHAPTER VII.
Court day brought ever a large and motley crowd to town.
It is the farmer's levee, his monthly holiday—a proper time for friendly intercourse and barter. Usually busied in the field or about the farm, he sees little of the social or business world except through the medium of county court day.
On such occasions most of the tillers of the soil quit work and come in from the surrounding country and the neighboring hills—even from further outlying villages and adjacent counties. Some come on business, some on pleasure bent, but whether for recreation or profit, a goodly crowd convenes, the day in itself an all-sufficient excuse for the act.
A Kentucky court day possesses a marked social feature peculiarly its own. The men meet friends and neighbors in a social mood; renew acquaintances of long standing, and enjoy making new ones; they exchange political opinions, disseminate local news, trade, swap, buy or sell; the women come to town, exchange country produce for shopping bargains, and learn something of the prevailing mode from their more stylish sisters who are in closer touch with the outer world.
Occasionally it comes to pass that personal grievances and feuds of long standing, or even family differences, are settled by a court day encounter, wherein the all-too-ready knife or pistol helps to play the tragic part; but oftener a spirit of good-fellowship prevails, and the social glass binds friendly neighbors into boon companions.
There is yet a more God-fearing element—the bone and sinew of pioneer strength and hardy manhood, men of simple faith, who walk sedately in the paths of sobriety and peace, whose lives are as quiet and gentle as the folk who once "dwelt in the basin of Minas." And in all, it is a strangely mixed gathering of good and evil—a Kentucky court day.
A larger crowd than usual was in town on this particular October morning. Most of the crops had been laid by, and even the more careful husbandmen felt as if they might safely indulge in a holiday without disquieting thoughts of work done and duties neglected; but there were other reasons yet to account for the large attendance on this day.