The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-07-12
SUMMER IN KENTUCKY.

IChar.es I. O'Maiiey, n The Current
 Let us go a-journeying to-day said Gretchen 10 me one daybreak ID early May. not prosy drive on the dusty road where one can't see anything, you know, but differen. route, through sbosky glade and grene shade where a, leas, the atmosphere has an odor of new ness"
 ..Tha, is, youIl take the cane-brake and the Cypress road along the river Why not begin al the head of the creek and come down through the valley and the farming country until we strike the river bottom :"
 aOf all things" she assented. and taking OUT factotum, Jeff, an intelligent youth of 10, son of one of the negro ien ants, to hold the horse or the baby as oc- casion might require, we packed in din- ner enough for dozen, armed ourselves with notebooks, pencils. crayons and paper for Gretchen, who contemplated skesching anything that might come within range, from a jungle 10 a nut hatch, and started.
 Have you ever been in Kentucky. It possesses an aspect iaexplicably different from that of any of its sister states its skies, its streams, its rivers, it's farms, its fora, its fauna are peculiarly it's own-its very people are different in their genial pride from those of the colder north or the warmer south. IL is the golden mean" between the ancient digniied hauteur of the southerner and the re- served coldness of the mechanical north erner. Yet Kentucky people, too, are
 A &l .&- widespread celebrity. To be Ken ,uckian is equal 10 being Bos,onian, and really, when you come 10 consider it, the lauded Kentucky gentleman, with his thousand acres of bluegrass pasture, his hundreds of cattle, me horses and fat hogs, with some dozens of men d, work under his direction, IS a sort of small emperor, a feudalist. knigh. of the middle ages-his comfortably housed tenantry representing his 'squires and re- tainers-who looks down with placid contempt on the q Down Easter who affects to sheer a. the :" no cuichah of the south. Like the more primitive Scots, kentuckians may be said 10 pos sess lndividuaii,ies of their own. and, it must be owned, some very peculiar indi- vidualities, amounting sometimes to idosyncrasies--instanc Captain Symmes, of Polar fame, and others-yet main taining withal for each other, like the afore- said Scots, sort of bro,herly elannishness which never deserts them. Taken all in all, probably no oiner ss4:e in the union offers such wide and varied field to the novelist, in the matter of character study, and dignihed simplicity, as Kentucky, * .<as, <I, %t kA l. lucky farmer. Where can you find more local color and distinc, individualism :. The great American novel of the future is now being silently formed and molded somewhere or other, or up, down, among the gentle declivities of this cline of bil- lowy bluegrass.
 The modern tourist no longer follows in the beaten paths where those preced- ing him have given a certain odor of hackneyedness to the attractions of the landscape, therefore in the first faint flush of morning we are wheeling along the broad lanes of southwestern Kentucky. It was dawn when we started, ard the land only seemed but half awake. 4 drowsy mist lay in heavy folds over the newly-plowed fields. and but few birds were out Now and then you could hear, far of from the meadows beyond the mist, the first low prelude of partridge call" whe- ully-whul, Bob, Bob White." (the las. is always boldly interrogative) and at times, with short, quick snap, like broken glass, kelinck '" red-bird would suddenly shoot across our path and disappear in the thicket on our right, like flame red signal of the coming dawn. Of all early birds, the partridge and the red-bird are the earliest, at least in Kentucky. Meadow-larks come next, but the sparrows rarely get up till it is broad, open day. The mocking- bird, who not infrequently sings till three o'clock at night, retires late and seldom comes on the boards nll awakened by the Jay and oat-bird, which, after sun-up, splash about in the early dew .i;h much noise and clatter-whiie one is al break fast
 By and by the sun came up; the mist folds were broken and poured in windy torrents down ove- the iowlands. The ruminant cattle, which till now we had found lying chewing peacefully by the roadside, got up and shook the dew from of their shaggy sides, and started again in search of the shor,-cropped grass of the lane ciumps of wild roses could be seen at intervals and a myriad of birds. all alive with riotous glee, darsed here and there, lighting on the wayside weeds. Up at the low. old fashioned farm houses, life had begun to awake: cows lowed at the gates, pigs squeAled m the barn-yard. calves beloved, bells tinkled. gates creaked, while nov and then you could hear the cheery cop, co'p' of the plow- boy, as he ven5ed his way through the dewy ciover-blooms, lustily calling his team from the distant lowland mezdows. Smoke-wreashs arose in gracefM spires and columns, tapery and voluted, from the dozen tall chimneys in the valley, and of a sudden a rapid whiri parted the humid mist and showed us, like a flash cf light, the bloomy clover meadow down beneash, the ragged and vcrn rail-fences,