The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-09-17
In the Heart of West Virginia. r I,lIon Rolnb In Harper's MagaZIne,

tJulian Ralph In Harper's MagazIne.l
 At any point on the frontier or in the heart of West Virginia you step from your Pullman to the wagon that awaits you, and the length of mornings "constitutionap finds you in the domin- ion of a belated century. The time is right by your watch, but your pocket calendar is one hundred years too far ahead. It is true that the present era jars the past in places. The Chesa- peake and Ohio railroad, which bisects the state, is modern even to elegance, but thousands of the people near its steel threads have never ridden over mile of it. That very modern states- man, w. L. Wilson, halls from there; but the life in the mountains Is so an cient that George Washington, were he | back on earth, would say, after a tour of the whole country, "At last, here find a part of the world as I left it."
 I went into West Virginia over the Pennsylvania border last summer and | put up at mountain spring resort. | there. The arch city maiden in white flannel was there trimming her hat l with butterflies, sticking hat-pin into them at twenty places, "so as to find their hearts and kill them without | hurting them too much," and at night she banged out Sousa's last two-step in a way that filled the old woods with the breath of Michigan-avenue board | ing-house. But in the early morning,
 when her flannel suit hung over chair,
 and her "white sailor" sat the top of
 the bedroom pitcher with. a rakish cant to one side, the squirrels and the
 locusts and katydids had the forests to themselves, and the early stirrers on
 the mountain roads were the old-time West Virginians, as simple and genu- | inc as fresh air.
 l Observing that the strangers at the l Springs came from unthought-of dis l tances to drink the sulphur water that
 bubbled up in the meadow by the ho-
 tel, they, too, paid the tardy century
 the compliment of drinking its catholi-
 con. But, with never-failing shyness, they always came at sun-up, without
 noise or hustle, though in strong force,
 to fill their pails and cans and blickeys
 and carry the liquid away. They and
 the ninetenth-century boarders were
 impressed and cozened by the same fact; the water smelled so bad and
 tasted so nasty that 1t must certainly
 be good medicine. will never forget
 how the mountaineers interested me
 The women came sidewise, bobbing
 lightly up and down on the horses, with
 both feet side by side on the animals
 ribs. The capes of their calico hoods
 waved prettily@in the breeze. The
 teamsters knew better than to sit or
 the joltiIg wagons that pounded over
 the rocks in the roads, so each saddlec
 the left-hand horse of his team an6
 rode at ease, while the horses tuggeG
 up the hills with force that had to bt
 met and eased by means of the harness of broad straps which is, the horse geal of the entire Appalachian world. Th' little boys brought trousers that dit not know their shoes, never having met them, and jackets that mimicket 5 the trousers by being too short-in tn
 sleeves as well as the body. The Attl
 girls were bare at both top and toe, a , befitted creatures that did not have t go into the thorn and +bramble thickets as the boys, hadsto do iii order to D ; boys. But their tubular cotton draw CTS desired to see as much of life a possible, and therefore reached belo, . their little dresses. All alike were sim 5 pie, honest, unobtrusive and shy.