The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-01-08

hard and callous-see. seei Just like my heart is. now. will work and work. and toll. until fall exhausted. Then I will sleep and rest until 1t Is time for work again; and thus will perhaps maintain miserable exist ence.
 Highways and Byways of the South. Mir. Clifton Johnson. the author of 'Sew England and It's Neighbors." has written a most readable and informing volume on the South. Mir. Johnson merely tells what comes under his own observation In desultory jaunts about our country. He does not phliosopnize. logical treatise.
 He Is entirely unprejudiced himself. but he runs amuck of some of our pre- Judices. Yet so vividly and so truth fully does he draw the characters witb whom he comes in contact that we needs must share the laugh at our selves--sometimes. Not every time His old soldier, his landlord on the Suwanee River, would fit well Into the best pages of Mir. Hories, Mir. Page, or MT. Dixon. though truth to tell. the take people as they are but rather as they should be, in their Sunday clo'es" as 1t were.
 Much information I gathered from Mir. Perky as we sat together on his 'po'ch.' MT. Perky had been a soldier. So have practically all the older South ern mon. I was In the war from be- ginnin' to end.' he said. an I use to think sometimes about desertin'; but |reckoned deserter wouldn't be thought much of at home. That's whar I was tnfa he haA Aha to make money after they gotSback, and those that didn't desert came home pore. and so the deserters done showed up the best and was most thought of
 "He seemed to be haunted by @ mel ancholy regret that he had not deserted. He was a tall, lank, cadaverous-fea- tured man, and not very energetic. He liked to sit on his porch and think most Southern people have the same liking. It seems to be constitutional or climatic necessity.
 "At any rate, ancestral usage from the remote past has put on the custom the seal of it's approval. MT. Perky would spend the major part of a day on his 'poch' with entire ease of con- science. For a change he might go to the store and sit on the po'ch there an hour or so."
 Mr. Perky Is Southern. we have all seen our MT. Perkys. But the same type sits beside the store in his sec ton all day not forty miles from New York, and goes to sit beside the store stove for a change. ass-differences. however much we declaim that there are no such things in America. are deeper chan national or even interna- tional differences. MT. Johnson takes Tuskegee for the representative town In Alabama He writes but little of the negro school. Much of the town as typical of the country town of the South.
 The town life Is not very energetic A good many of the stores get along without sign boards, and I frequent ly heard their proprietors willing away their leisure In the recesses of their shops with . guitar, or cornet, or fiddle"
 , That seems to me idyilic.. How bet ter could the shop.keepers spend their leisurs7 Nor does Mr. Johnson con- slider how many working hours there are In the South. A man rises to bus mess never later than six or seven o'clock tn a country town. and ner- chants keep shops open until eleven or twelve at night Compare these hours with those of a busy hustiing city. In New York people are hardly out IOr DusineSB uutii teu ak morning. stores are closed ct half-past five or six o'clock. Yonr Southern working man, particularly if hs is 6 proprie- tor. attending to his own business. has about eighteen working hours. about six for. sleep. If he doesn't trouble his guitar at leisure moments in those working hours when will be timble it?
 They have plenty of time to visit with those who wander h." The Southern phrase ''to visit," that is, to chat with. to talk to, queer ex- pressibn until one gets accustomed to it. You will have time at the re. ception to visit with Mrs. Blank, she will be true also" We had quite a little visit together at the exhibit ''Let us have a nice little visit" aI- ways meaning talk. The photographs illustrating the volume are most