This incident is a little out of the common, nowadays; but it is typical of what was customary until lumbering and other industrial works began to invade the solitudes. To-day it is the rule to charge twenty-five cents a meal and the same for lodging, regardless of what the fare and the bed may be. When you think of it, this is right, for “the porer folks is the harder it is to git things.”
The mountaineers always are eager for news. In the drab monotony of their shut-in lives the coming of an unknown traveler is an event that will set the whole neighborhood gossiping. Every word and action of his will be discussed for weeks after he has gone his way. This, of course, is a trait of rural people everywhere; but imagine, if you can, how it may be intensified where there are no newspapers, few visitors, and where the average man gets maybe two or three letters a year!
Riding up a branch road, you come upon a white-bearded patriarch who halts you with a wave of the hand.
“Stranger—meanin’ no harm—whar are you gwine?”
You tell him.
“What did you say your name was?”
You had not mentioned it; but you do so now.
“What mought you-uns foller for a living?”
It is wise to humor the old man, and tell him frankly what is your business “up this ’way-off branch.”
Half a mile farther you espy a girl coming toward you. She stops like a startled fawn, wide-eyed with amazement. Then, at a bound, she dodges into a thicket, doubles on her course and runs back as fast as her nimble bare legs can carry her to report that “Some-body ’s comin’!”