The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-08-03

hortation and prayer, but the funeral
rites of all who have departed this life
since the preachers last visit are duly
that wholesale wedding takes place
on these occasions-many swains en-
bracing the opportunity of having the
itinerant place his official stamp and
sanction on their connubial state.
No traveller is ever turned aside from
the door of the lowly shack of the
poor white of the East Tennessee noun
tain district. The salutation of ''howdy,"
followed by invitation to Eight and
rest yer hat" is invariably bidding to
the best in bed and board that the house
affords. The food is the crudest kind
-"meat" (fried salt pork, hoe cakes,
baked on the lid of the stove or at the
open fireplace, and cheap coffee, usually
without milk or sugar.
Honest as the Average.
AS the world goes, these people are
honest. The contents of an unlocked
and unattended house would be safe
from molestation for all time. The
naeun1 ct teuna of the razor-back hogs
that run at large and gain precarious
existence, save at the period when the
forest sheds its mama of mast, is al
ways respected. However, the obliga-
tion of debt rests very lightly on the
shoulders of the average native" II
by chance he becomes possessed of
little money from the sale of a few rail-
road ties, dozen bags of corn, which
he has toted many miles out to the
fringe of civilization, or of a sack of
sang" the ginseng root of the noun
tains, that has been laboriously har-
vested by the wife and children, his
immediate personal wants are so great
as to preclude the possibility of his dis
charging an Indebtedness which any
one has had the temerity to extend to
him. No mans intention to be just
and to do as he agrees is better than
that of the native East Tennessean,
but he lacks in toto the New England
gift of calculation" His plans in
variably miscarry, and his promises are
as naught. From the multitudinous
excuses he makes to a creditor, based
on natural causes-a dried-up spring,
a ''tide" in the river, muddy roads,
broken cart, or what not-it would
seem that the mountaineer has no
standing whatsoever. with the Al
In connection with one piece of prop
erty only has he no respect for pro-
prietary rights, and that is tree.
Wherever he can find it, and success
fully dispose of it, that tree is his, in
as the water be drinks from
the sparkling spring, the ambient air
he breathes or the glorious sunshine
that envelopes him in its tender en-
brace the greater part of each day.
During the civil war, notwithstand-
ing the detection of Tennessee, it was
this very section that supplied more
to the Union cause, popula-
ton considered, than any other part of
the country, and right royal fighters
were they, too. The recent war with
Spain witnessed another outpouring of
the sturdy East Tennesseans to take
service in their country's cause. Rarely,
and only from extra ordinary causes,
do they ever leave their narrow valleys
and wooded hills, but never can they
be permanently beguiled from the land
they love-the land of poverty, of hard
ships, of homely ways and simple |
wants. Here they live on and on
The world forgetting, by the world for
got"
American Lumberman.