"No," replied mine host. "Men seem to me to be losing faith. I once raised a woman up by prayer that three doctors had given up. Aunt Sally, have ye any of that liver invigorator? I kind of feel as if I needed some."
Here was a man who had prayed a woman out of the jaws of death, calling for liver medicine. None of them seemed to see the incongruity of it. One good old deacon that I knew horrified his pastor, who was a strong temperance man, by furnishing the communion with rye whiskey. The old man meant all right; but he had neglected to replenish the wine, and thought something of a spirituous nature was needed, and so brought the whiskey.
It is a fact worth noting, that we have to-day, in the year 1895, millions of men living in conditions as primitive as those of the eighteenth century, while in the same land we are building houses which are lighted and heated with electricity; that some men worship in houses built of logs, without glass windows, and others worship in buildings that cost millions; that in the former case men have lived in this way for over two hundred years, and the latter less than fifty since the Indian's tepee was the only dwelling in sight; that to-day may be seen the prairie schooner drawn by horses, oxen, or mules, and in one case a horse, a cow, and a mule, the little shanty on wheels, the man sitting in the doorway driving, and his wife cooking the dinner. But so it is. We have all the varieties of habitation, from the dugout of the prairie to the half-million summer cottage at Bar Harbor; and from a single Indian pony, we have all kinds of locomotion, up to the vestibuled palace on wheels.
That I may not seem to be over stating the condition of the mountain whites, and the dangers among our own people, I close with a quotation from Dr. Smart's Saratoga address:—
"Let me tell you of just one experiment of letting a people alone, and its result. Shall we trust that American institutions and American ideas, that the press and schools, will ultimately Americanize them? In the eastern part of Kentucky, in the western part of North Carolina and West Virginia, there is a section of country about the size of New Hampshire and New York,—one of the darkest spots on the map of the South. The people living there have been there for over a hundred years, and are of Scotch-Irish extraction. Whole counties can be found in which there is not a single wagon-road. Most of the houses are of one story, without a window, or only a small one; and the door has to be kept open to let in the light. I have it from good authority that when the first schoolmistress went there to teach, she stipulated that she should have a room with a window in it, and a lock to the door. Very few of the people can read or write. They have no newspapers, no modern appliances for agriculture, no connection with the world outside and around them. This is the land of the 'moonshiner.' They love whiskey, and so they manufacture it. The pistol and bowie-knife are judge and sheriff. Bloodshed is common, and barbarism a normal state of society. These men were not slaveholders in the times before the war. They were as loyal to the Union as any others who fought for the old flag, and they served in the Union army when they got a chance. When Bishop Smith in a large and influential meeting spoke of them, he touched the Southern and Kentucky pride, especially when he pointed out what a moral and spiritual blot they were upon the South. Now, why are they there a hundred years behind us in every respect? Why are they sunk so low? Simply because they have been let alone. They are just as much separated from this land, without any share in its marvellous progress, as if a Chinese wall had been built around them. They have been let alone; and American institutions, American schools, and the American press, have flowed around them and beyond them without effect."
XXV.
CHRISTIAN WORK IN A LUMBER-TOWN.
Until a few years ago I knew little or nothing of mill-towns or lumber-camps. I had seen a saw-mill that cut its thousand feet a day when running, and it was generally connected with some farm through which ran a stream. It was a very innocent affair. But in 1889 I saw for the first time the great forests of pine, and became acquainted with part of the immense army of lumbermen. Michigan alone had at that time some forty thousand; Wisconsin has as many; Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana are now engaged in a vast work; and when we add the great States of Oregon and Washington, with their almost illimitable forests, we feel that we are speaking within bounds when we say an immense army.