The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-07-08
MR. STEPHAN DESCRIBES
 TYPICAL COUNTY CUE
BY WILL T. STEPHAN.

Hf WILL T. SHEEHAN.
 pondence. )--We were in the hill coun- trv the country Of the hill billy, if you please. of the bare footed boy, of the sun bonneted girl. of the horny handed son of toll. following the blow in the furrow through the long day and so on to the end of the fervor or the stump speaker and the legisla- tive orator.
 We were in the Alabama hills and the people we saw. three thousand of them were of the hills. native born and descended from long lone line of native Alabamians. They were in the oak woods to take their pleasure. to relax from the constant though pro- fitable strife with the valley and hill farms. Too rare. 1t Is. that such a chance is open to the man of the hills and all too rare are there opportu- to forget the cares of life and meet upon common ground with her friends and her neizhbors.
 1t Is not the toll. 1t Is not the labor. which makes country life hard and for- bidding to womankind-makes 1t hard CT for her than for man. It Is the loneliness. If 1t be that she has known ether life in the town or village. The loneliness of woman has depoDulated
 more farms In Alabama thar the om- inous Black Peril which stalks along the roads of Middle ana South Alabama and more than were depopulated by -$%--.s. esf -e&A NtohAhA8 et tP VI AoNesa>f-f-~ cotton.
 But for the good of the State and of the nation. there be women who have known no other life but the life of the farm, who are content with 1t and who love It. For the upbuilding of the nation and for the common glory. they live in the hills and valleys and rear children. who go forth and take place in the rank of the worlds best workers. who, when grown to manhood,
 through childhood of open air and purity. take the place of those who l fall when jaded and satiated with
 The hills and valleys from whence came this Fourth of July crowd, raise
 men and for that State and nation are are | strongest. the ablest and the mos; viriia of those who stand in the front rank of the strife and contention oi life, if we separate them and trace | they will be found to have spent those years in some God-fearing home, tho
 center of a frugal farm. If we point 1 out for study those who have Rivel I and taken the hardest blows in tho fight, their lives lead back rc the coun. | try, where character was shaped IT
 morality and in sunlight.
 And this say in truth-peing ne office geeker and having nothing or
 earth to win by soft-soaping the Ala, bama farmers. I would not say tha the farmer Is more honorable than th' city man, or that the plane Of hi. higher than that Of the city man, bu | | would say that he lives cleaner ant a more wholesome life and his chfidreI lead a more wholesome life, ever I though 1t be poorer in opportunity thar the childhood of the city man. | study in Holiday Gathering. l What finer book could he studied then than this holiday gathering, look
 which the dweiiers of the hills and th' I tillers of the soil stand7
 They gathered at the road side ai
 we rode up to the grove at lone,
 from the city. the men who came iron l a life. unknown to them. And wei they might study the visitors who were in the main Alabamians. whose name!
 cesses of the state. The visitors l brought out with them the atmospher' of new thinEs--the suggestion or ne" 1 thought.
 But as fine a study as the visitors l were tn the assembled farmers. the as sembled formers. their wives and theil | children were even finer study fo' | the men who had come to meet then face to face and to talk of those things
 ir which the Alabamian in the cit! | and in the country is interested, Th' | visitors had the privilege of meeting an audience that was or the soii. on' in which country lire m AlaDAHd wa, I untouched by the influence of railroad | or city. They wers seeing the flow o, | a current of life practically unchanged | for half century--for Jones Chape! | is A full fourteen miles from railroad | and many of those who gathered thert \ had come from homes, set more thar | twenty-ffve miles from railroad. They who gathered there, men, wo- | men and children. were Of purest an l gIc-saxon blood. There are few places | in the United States where an audiencc so essentially American could have | been assembled, if we count native ! birth and an ancestry of native Amer | jeans.
 The forefathers of those who made | the audience came over the mountains | and hiils from the strip of States alone | the Atlantic coast. which wresteo | American independence from the strong and mighty Empire of Great Britain. The ancestors may have stopped l A while in Georgia. or In Tennessee, or they may have come on into Alabama 1 But at all times the strain of blood has been American.
 Live Unchanged Life.
 Generation after generation families have lived an unchanged life in the \ hilIr and valleys. There was practically TO slavery here No industrial order. no social system was razed to the ground by the war. The grandfather of fifty years ago, the grandson Of to- day, lived the same life, the simple lire s--