The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-11-20

at the cabin did not give me Joy. They
also noticed that I carried a large pill
low around with me and sat omit to
keep from taking cold on the dewy
earth.
This morning eight boys came to
where we were fishing. All of them
had large, beautiful welts over theeye,
and they said that they were a com
mittee sent to demand an advance on
the price of bait. / told them there was
nothing to arbitrate, but Mr.. Fox
thought best to accede to the demand
of tire committee, so we are paying 40
cents now, but require the strikers to
furnish their. own soda and ammonia.
Mr.. Fox arose early this morning to
go to the summit of Craggy mountain.
His desire was to see the glorious, sun
arise far DER the mountain gray, and,
as he amounted up the sky, the darkness
fee away.
Curiosity of that kind used to bother
me years ago, but now 1 a control it
better. I heard him getting up in the
night, it seemed to me, and falling over
my celebrated waterproof porpoise
hide shoes, which I have had-over a
year, and yet they have that same
dumb but powerful method of letting
people know where they are. They
are full of fish oil, and all last winter
while travelling I was not allowed to
put up at the best hotels, many of the
guests thinking that positively these
shoes we're contagious.
Mr.. Fox ate a cold biscuit and went
up to the top of the mountain, but he
was too honest to lie about it when he
got back. He is the most trustworthy
young man I ever knew. I've seen the
sweetest old ladies on earth climb
Zermatt or Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau
to view the sunrise and then describe
it and lie about it when they got back,
for the clouds had obscured the sunrise
entirely, and I've known white haired
old men with blameless lives behind
them to tell the most gigantic whacks
and whoppers about the sunrise on the
Fooglehorn, or the Doodlehorn, OF the
Poodlehorn Alps when the sun had
been obscured for a week. But Mr..
Fox told me honestly that the trip was
not a success, and he scorned to lie
about it. Now when he says that he
pulled a IL pound trout out of the water
and lost him in the tall grass 1 believe
every word he says.
But l can truly say that this is
the most absolute and unmitigated
week of unblemished delight that l
have ever put in, and my lif". too, has
been n of exceptional enjoy ment, Tor
1 am of a sunny nature and live in a
gentle, genial atmosphere. Weare not
camping out and living on crickets or
trusting to a man cook who never tried
it before. At the foot of Craggy noun
tain, by the bank of the brawling
stream, stands a neat little cottage with
real beds in it and a big fireplace where
one may dry his wet feet and eat three
meals addy prepared by Mrs. Barnard,
She is not a college cook in his fresh
man year, who knows things that the
Creator has not yet given to the press.
She a cook, however, and does not
allow the smoking tobacco to get into
the butter the way a man cook does.
We don't have to tote water two miles
when we are tired or sleep in our wet
clothes with a thousand legged worm
in each a so as to get he, lthy.
When we don't care to 60 ii hing or
gathering bouquets of bright red hor-
net bites, we can sit on the porch and
smoke a long stem pipe and read a
novel. This, therefore, is a successful
trip, and when we get enough of it we
can take Mr.. Cushing's swift horses
and in 24 hours get comfortably into
Asheville, where we may be mixing up
with the elite this evening in low neck
and short sleeves if we want to.
The agricultural interests here seem
to be centered very largely in the herb
industry. Every morning about 80 OF
40 men go by here IN their way TO the
heart of the forest, with a mattock
over one shoulder and a gunny sack
over the other, and at night they cone
home with a bushel or so of jelico root,
worth from 81 to 80 c5nts. This root,
when dried, is sold to the store and
thence to the wholesale chemists of
New York. Sometimes they get a lit
tie ginseng, or sang" as it is called,
which the Chinese pay a high price for.
Some of the land here is pretty good,
but more of it is not. 1t reminds me
of a section in Dakota where James