A stranger whose calked boots betrayed his calling stopped at Uncle Mark’s to inquire, “Can I git to stay all night?” Aunt Nance, peeping through a crack, warned her man in a whisper: “Them loggers jest louzes up folkses houses.” Whereat Mark answered the lumberjack: “We don’t ginerally foller takin’ in strangers.”
Jack glanced significantly at the lowering clouds, and grunted: “Uh—looks like I could stand hitched all night!”
This was too much for Mark. “Well!” he exclaimed, “mebbe we-uns can find ye a pallet—I’ll try to enjoy ye somehow.” Which, being interpreted, means, “I’ll entertain you as best I can.”
The hospitality of the backwoods knows no bounds short of sickness in the family or downright destitution. Travelers often innocently impose on poor people, and even criticise the scanty fare, when they may be getting a lion’s share of the last loaf in the house. And few of them realize the actual cost of entertaining company in a home that is long mountain miles from any market. Fancy yourself making a twenty-mile round trip over awful roads to carry back a sack of flour on your shoulder and a can of oil in your hand; then figure what the transportation is worth.
Once when I was trying a short-cut through the forest by following vague directions I swerved to the wrong trail. Sunset found me on the summit of an unfamiliar mountain, with cold rain setting in, and below me lay the impenetrable laurel of Huggins’s Hell. I turned back to the head of the nearest water course, not knowing whither it led, fought my way through thicket and darkness to the nearest house, and asked for lodging. The man was just coming in from work. He betrayed some anxiety but admitted me with grave politeness. Then he departed on an errand, leaving his wife to hear the story of my wanderings.
I was eager for supper; but madame made no move toward the kitchen. An hour passed. A little child whimpered with hunger. The mother, flushing, soothed it on her breast.
It was well on in the night when her husband returned, bearing a little “poke” of cornmeal. Then the woman flew to her post. Soon we had hot bread, three or four slices of pork, and black coffee unsweetened—all there was in the house.
It developed that when I arrived there was barely enough meal for the family’s supper and breakfast. My host had to shell some corn, go in almost pitch darkness, without a lantern, to a tub-mill far down the branch, wait while it ground out a few spoonfuls to the minute and bring the meal back.
Next morning, when I offered pay for my entertainment, he waved it aside. “I ain’t never tuk money from company,” he said, “and this ain’t no time to begin.”
Laughing, I slipped some silver into the hand of the eldest child. “This is not pay; it’s a present.” The girl was awed into speechlessness at sight of money of her own, and the parents did not know how to thank me for her, but bade me “Stay on, stranger; pore folks has a pore way, but you’re welcome to what we got.”