The Portland daily press., 1894-09-03
A Primitive Land.

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 a morning.
constitutional finds you In the dc min
ion of belated century. The time is
right by your watch, but your pocket
calendar is hundred years too far
ahead. 1t is true that the present era
jars the past in places.
The Chesapeake 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
but the life in tie mountains is so an
Gent that George Washington. were he
back on earth, would say, after tour
of the whole country, At last, there l
find part of the world as left it,"
/ went into West Virginia over the
Pennsylvania border last summer, and
put up at mountain spring resort.
There was clashing of two centuries
there. The arch city maiden IN white
flannel was there trimming her hat 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 way that
filled thu old woods with the breath of
a Michigan Avenue boarding house. But
in the early morning, when her flannel
suit hung over chair. and her white
sallorn sat the top OF the bedroom pitch
er with rakish can't to one side, the
squirrels and the locusts and katydids
had the forests to themselves, and the
early stirrers on the mountain roads
We're the old time West Virginians, as
simple and genuine as fresh air.
Observing that the strangers at the
Springs came from unthought of dis
tances to drink the sulphur water that
buhbled up in the meadow by the hotel,
they too paid the tardy century the COM
pliment of drinking it's catholicon. But
with never failing shyness they always
came at sunup, without noise or hustle,
though in strong force, to fill their pals
and cans and blickeys and carry the
liquid away. They and the nineteenth
century boarders were impressed and
cozened by the same fact: the water
smelled SO bad ard tasted so nasty that
it must certainly be good medicine.
never will forget how the mountaineers
interested me. The women came side
wise. bobbing lightly up and down on
tuC uOioSHs Will pOUA lCOu SioO ny SlQC
ON the animals ribs. The capes of
their calico hoods waved prettily in the
breeze. The teamsters knew better than
to sit on the jolting wagons that pound
ed over the rocks in the roads, SO each
saddled the left hand horse of his team
and rode att ease, while the horses
tugged up the hills with force that
had to be met and eased by means of the
harness of broad straps, which is the
horse gear of the entire Appalachian
world. The little boys brought trousers
that did not know their shoe, never hav-
ing met them, and jackets that MINI
licked the trousers being too short in the
sleeves as well as the body. The little
girls were bare at both top and toe, as
befitted creatures that did not have to
go into the torn and bramble thickets,
as the boys had to do in order co be
boys. But their tubular cotton drawers
desired to see as much of life as posi- BILE,
and therefore reached below their little
dresses. All alike were simple, honest,
unobtrusive and shy.-From where
Time has Stun ered," by Julian Ralph,
in Harpers Magazine for September