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Down, down again, borrowing the moccasons of magic,--one step across Wisconsin, and one more to Illinois, and--there is sunshine even in Chicago, and hard pavements, and I have a glimpse of stately houses, and I believe I detect vines, and lattice-work, and certainly a flash of bright blue water. Brava! Chicago. Possibly, after all, with a cloudless day and enough of them, like young Abijah, I might see some good thing may be found in thee. Down and down through endless forests, through overgrown corn-fields that
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seem to have forgotten they are corn-fields, and to imagine they have kept their first estate as prairies, and stretch and swell accordingly; great, fertile--fields you can hardly call them--tracts perhaps, or counties. Really Indiana and Illinois mean to show cause for their existence. I wonder how life goes on these fat lands. Do rich soils give rich souls?
"Everything goes lovely and the goose hangs high," says my friend, who has travelled often in this as in all directions, and knows much. But what he knows is chiefly social and historical lore. It is I who prosecute philological researches, and I will now inform the learned and inquisitive reader of the origin of that occult line, which, I believe, has hitherto baffled investigation. It comes from the South, where the wild geese fly low in dull weather, and high in fair, clear days. Hangs is a false word,--a Northern corruption of the negro dialect yang,--an onomatopœian word, representing the "far heard clang" of the wild goose. So in literal fine weather, or in that state of prosperity which may be typified by it, we say, "Everything goes lovely and the goos yang's high." I shall beg
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to send in my name as a candidate for membership of the Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club.
"But--Egypt,--does not Egypt lie hereabout?"
"O no! Egypt is over yonder. Southern Illinois."
"How came it to be called Egypt in the first place? It is a nickname, I suppose."
"From the Egyptian darkness that enshrouds it, doubtless. The popular notion in Egypt is that 'Grammar talk' is exclusively for the use of people who put on airs and wear 'store close.'"
"I suppose putting on 'store close' there is counted all one with putting on airs."
"Exactly. A short time ago a man buried his wife in C---- County. The mother of the friend with whom I was stopping went to their house to assist them, and suggested to the bereaved widower that a clean shirt was a proper preparation for the solemnities of the occasion. 'What!' said the members of the family, 'put on airs at a funeral! Why, if the ole man gits on a clean shart, he won't come home fur a
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week.' And the shart was not put on. One old lady said she would not like to be buried in such a way. 'Hi, ole 'oman,' said the man, 'you may be glad if you get buried at all!'
"The attendants do not follow the body decorously; they go before, behind, and at the side, without any attempt at order. Praying at the grave is also held to be putting on airs. This, however, is only a modification of the silly sentimentality which prompted George Arnold to request or direct that there be no singing or praying at his grave or over his remains. George must have had a keen sense of the worthlessness of his poor clay."
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
"'When scoundrels die, let all bemoan 'em.' Not that George was a scoundrel,--only a wishy-washy poet, and when a wishy-washy poet makes such a request, it is well enough to blunt his arrows by telling the world that he is wishy-washy, and let it go at that."
"Egypt is the stronghold of Democracy, is it not?"
"Naturally. There is a clear affinity between dirt and ignorance and Democracy. It is here
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that Democracy finds in all its tribulations an unfailing source of consolation. The dirtier a man is, the greater his popularity. It is a sign that he is n't 'stuck up.' To be dirty is the prevailing taste."
"I should think they were much like the 'poor whites' of the South."
"They are the poor whites of the South come so far North. They have the true poor white contempt for niggers and New-Englanders; the latter being held, if anything, somewhat inferior to the former. You can judge how well grounded is this sentiment of contempt. One of the families I know of 'pails the cow,' waters the 'hoss,' and washes the family linen (which is a somewhat extravagant appellation for the family apparel) in the same bucket! Most of the dwellers thereabouts keep their cutlery by splitting a crack in one of the boards or logs of the cabin, and sticking the knives and forks into it. If anything happens to get misplaced, the inquiry is whether the seeker has looked into the crack.
"A few days ago a neighbor called on my friend's wife. Wheat-bread was on the table.
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The agreeable visitor declared her inability to eat it. She said 'it stuffed her up so.' Besides, she did n't think it was fit for white folks, though she expressed no opinion as to its fitness for niggers. Her taste was for corn-bread."
"Corn-bread is an excellent thing to have a taste for."
"And I must say their corn-bread is good. They had a wedding there the other day. The ceremony was unique. After it was over, the clergyman said to the newly married pair, 'that according to the laws of the State of Illinois, he would wish them good luck and shake hands with them.'"
"If golde ruste what shulde yren do?"
"There is rusty gold enough anywhere about. I have heard it given as a good reason for liking the minister's wife, that she dug all the potatoes herself, and then wheeled them into the cellar!
"They tell a story--I don't know how true it is--of a man named Hogg, who went to the Legislature to get his name changed. The Solons were complaisant. What would he like to be called? O anything; he was n't partic-
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ular. So the legislators very obligingly called him Thing.
"Last Sunday but one, a baby died in the vicinity. True to the prevailing fashion,--ought it not to be called 'policy'?--the family declined to put on clean clothing. Also they went to the funeral barefooted. The next day the baby's sister came down to see a servant of my friend's. She sang a song which ran thus,
'Let the world wag as it will, I'll be gay an' happy still!'
They say she was gay and happy, if the unearthly row she made indicated a happy condition of mind."
"I suppose the poor thing had been brought up to it, or down to it, all her life."
"O yes. They are pretty much on a level. Men, women, and children chew tobacco and swear. Two little neighbor-children called at my friend's. One of them was four years old, and expectorated a yellowish fluid, which quite alarmed my friend. 'Why,' said she to the elder of the two, 'what is the matter with your little sister that she spits so?'
"'Well,' was the answer, in a sort of indig-
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nant tone, 'I s'pose our Lucy kin chaw tobacky if she wants to!'"
But this broad, rich country will one day be rescued from thraldom. Slavery is gone, and all its shoots and suckers will presently die. Art and science and religion will come in to these dreary intellectual wastes, and the dry lands shall be springs of water. This is manifest destiny.
But we have come out of the woods and the corn-fields; we have struck the Ohio River at last, and take steamer at high noon. The day is cloudless, the river coffee-colored and homely to the eye, muddy and unsavory to the taste,--yet a little way off it cannot help shining and sparkling in this brilliant sun. The shores and scenery are utterly unlike those we have so lately left, but they have an interest of their own. For we are sailing down the late dividing line between Slavery and Freedom, and the temptation is very strong to "offer a few remarks," as they say at "evening meeting"; but in consideration of the national fatigue induced by four years' hard fighting and two of reconstructing, I spare the gentle reader.
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I will not promise, however, that such praiseworthy self-restraint shall endure to the end. The steamer is large and showy, but comfortable. We sit on the sunny side, and glide placidly down the stream, enjoying the loveliness of the sky, and the gentle, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes rather tame shores none the less for the mental background of Mississippi bluffs they rise against. It is quiet here and soothing, while the great River of the North stimulates and solemnizes. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification, and none without its own melody. Perhaps we go up into the pilot-house to get uninterrupted views, and to watch out the lingering afternoon. It spreads up the heaven in a blaze of ruddy light. It softens and fades and dies into the twilight, it is gone, and the great, full moon and the splendid stars come out and take their turn, and the river is flooded with silver light. I am so happy to be alive and see it all. The pilot is civil, but silent. One hardly ventures to speak to him lest it should disturb him, and somehow deflect the vessel from its proper
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course, and send us all to the bottom. Indeed, I am half afraid he does not want us here; but we asked permission, and he gave it graciously. When we go down to supper, however, he invites us to return,--an invitation which gives instant relief, both as indemnity for the past and security for the future. He tells us moreover that his watch will be out before we come back, but the pilot is always glad to have people up there. He is apt to get lonesome. Thank you, friend Pilot, that is just what we wish to know. May be you have put it a little couleur de rose, but never mind.
Supper is a momentary interruption, and we are speedily enthroned again in the pilot-house, among the
"Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, Where I hush and bless myself with silence."
But our pilot number two is of a social turn, and he makes us acquainted with all the river lore, and amuses us with stories of the guerillas and with various narratives and speculations.
"I come pretty near getting catched once," he says. "I was at the landing down at ----. All at once a company of 'em started up, twen-
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ty men I should think, and ordered me to land. I told 'em no, that wa'n't a good place for me to land. They said they 'd kill me if I did n't. I told 'em they 'd kill me anyhow if they got me among 'em, and I started. Then they begun to fire. I was up here, and it was warm weather, and the sashes was back, and there was nothing to hinder. Three balls hit the wheel. One cut the bell-rope. I put on all the steam she could bear, an' seemed as if she never went so slow in the world. She just seemed to float. Of course she was goin' like a bird, but it takes a good while to get out of twenty-musket-range when you 're once in it, long or short. Now the head of that gang is put up for the Legislature."
"Do you suppose they wanted to capture the boat, or what?"
"Oh! there was thirty-five thousand dollars in her safe, and they knew it. That 's what they were after."
"But why did they come at you? I should think they would have commanded the captain to give up the boat."
"They did n't stand for captain. If they could
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kill or capture me, they could get control of the ship fast enough."
"I suppose your office is as important as that of captain."
"Yes, all the lives on board are in the hands of the engineer and me."
"You ought to be trustworthy men."
"Yes, a man that 's going to be a pilot now has to take some pretty solemn oaths,"--and he gives the preliminaries of induction into office, anecdotes of river experience, and illustrations of the strictness with which the river laws and steamer laws are enforced. Then we fall into silence awhile, which he breaks with the remark that it is very pretty weather. So it is. I had not thought of that before. Then he takes his turn at eliciting information.
"You are going far South?"
"As far as Chattanooga."
"Do you live in Chattanooga?"
"No, I live in Massachusetts."
"Ain't you afraid, coming from Massachusetts?"
"No. Why?"
"O, there aint' no reason, only some are."
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"Do you think there is any danger to a Northerner travelling South?"
"O, no; there ain't no danger at all, only from some of the roughs down there. But they won't hurt you."
"But did not the guerillas take a boat from this river, only a few weeks ago."
"No, 't wa'n't guerillas. 'T was a piece of revenge. What they wanted was the mail agent. An' they got him. 'T ain't all they 'll get either."
"How came your people to give him up?"
"They would have mobbed the boat if he had not surrendered. But 't was a pretty serious matter, I can tell you. Stopping a guv'ment officer. One man who was in it went up with us, said he did n't expect nothin' less 'n five years in the penitentiary, but he would do it again!--Do you see them ducks on the water. See how they 'll fly when we drive into 'em." And so they do, but not far, for they are used to steamers I suppose, and soon settle down again comfortably.
How smoothly we divide the shining waters that shine in wavering lustres behind us! "How beautiful is night!" The "silent air" is broken
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at length by our friendly pilot, who says in half-musing tones, as if it might pass for information to us if we chose to consider it such, or, if not, it would serve for his own delectation. "Steam was invented by an old woman from her tea-kettle."
"Was it? I did not know it."
"Yes, and she made her husband have her spinning-wheel turned by it."
"That is where she was right. I must remember that." Another pause.
"Steam 's a great thing anyhow."
"Yes, it does a good deal of the world's work."
"That 's so."
And then it is getting late, and reluctantly we leave our post of observation, the pilot attending us to the cabin door, and inviting us always to come into the pilot-house whenever we are travelling on the river, which we shall be sure to do; but, O Pilot! I never expect to be on the Ohio River again. It is a sad descent from the outside to the inside of a steamer on a moon-lit, star-lit night, and I am incensed at first with a negro woman, who has lost her
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cat, and is worrying the crew about it. But her voice is sweet, her manner unobtrusive, and her affectionate anxiety so great as to secure sympathy. The servants listen to her patiently and answer her civilly, but mutter to themselves, "Can't bother about cats, much as I can do to look after folks." The night passes as it may. It is but ill-sleeping in state-rooms, and we are up again at four watching out the moon and her long train of light on the water. While it is yet early morning the steward comes in with the lost cat, which leaps up into its mistress's lap, amid a general rejoicing. With such fair auspices we disembark, and are borne in chilly omnibuses, through the gray dawn, across the city of Lousville, and take our place in a car that looks suspiciously like the cast-off clothing of some Northern railway. The seats are flat and hard. The blind refuses to stay up, and has to be constantly propped; but the car itself moves easily, and we are borne safely through "Old Kentuck" to the Mammoth Cave. Fortunately we did not go in, but only rode over the top of it, so the gentle reader is spared the stalagmites and stalactites, the
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fishes without eyes, the fossil remains and the sublime sensations--fossil too--with which perforce he would otherwise have been deluged. Perhaps the statement that we went to Mammoth Cave needs a little modification; but as we stopped at Cave City, which is but about seven miles from the mouth of the cave, and as the cave is known to extend ten miles, and is supposed to reach many more, it may safely be inferred that the railroad runs over a considerable part of it. Indeed, from what is told, I judge Kentucky to be pretty nearly hollow, so completely honey-combed with caves is it represented.
But more thrilling names than any "Cave" are sounding at the little way-stations. Elizabeth Town, Mumfordsville, Bowling Green,--the land is suddenly alive. Was it over this pleasant country, through these beautiful, silent groves, that Bragg and Buell marched and countermarched all those anxious days that seem already to have been a thousand years away? Are these the rich fields to which the Rebel general brought his impoverished army to feed it upon their fatness? And here we get our
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first glimpse in his native home of the great, uncrowned King Cotton,--a sorry-looking monarch enough. Let us hope he will do better service as a subordinate than he ever did as sovereign. The cotton-fields are not very attractive. They have a scrawny look. The cotton is planted in hills like corn, and not, as I had supposed, sowed broadcast, like wheat. The snow-white blooms unfold but rarely, only a white shell bursting here and there, as if some one had scattered a few pinches of cotton-wool, where I looked for broad fields of whiteness. But there are plenty of black children, little impish half-naked picaninnies, plenty of women in among the cotton, gathering it into large baskets, and a few men with large, coarse sacks tied on like aprons, in which they place the cotton as they pluck it. They are taking life leisurely. They look up from their work and watch us out of sight, and we are in Nashville, wandering through its twilight streets, with a sad sense of
Nashville, the pride of Tennessee, the bright, the beautiful, the gay,--is it imagination, or is
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it reality that shrouds the light with gloom? I could think the houses dark and damp, the streets not clean nor cheerful. There are few equipages, no riders, little that speaks of the pleasure or content of life. The new Capitol, an imposing marble structure, looks down upon the Cumberland River from a height of one hundred and seventy-five feet, but looks down also upon a country war-shorn of its beauty. The lovely groves, the old oaks, the wooded hills, that made the suburbs of Nashville famous, have disappeared. It is a bare and dreary pasture, rough with earth-works, bristling with forts, whence not long since the bullets came whizzing through the cowed and sullen city.
And I think of that Sunday morning five years ago, when as yet Nashville had not tasted the cup from which she has since drank so deeply and so bitterly, the clear bright morning when there came down upon their wild, eager, expectant hearts, filled with dreams of conquest and renown, the heavy tidings, the doom of Donelson. We at the North remember that day well, the rapture of victory, the sorrow of slaughter, the joy of a speedily advancing peace.
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"There are glad hearts and sad hearts
By millions to-day,
As over the wires the magical fires
Are flashing the tidings of Donelson's fray;--
Hearts swelling with rapture
For Donelson's capture;
Hearts breaking with aching
For Donelson's slain.
O, whether the glory
Of Cumberland's story,
Or grief for the slaughter
That purpled its water,
In our bosoms should reign,
We leave in its doubt,
And join the wild shout,
The tumultuous hosanna,
That greets our dear banner
From Donelson's ramparts in triumph flung out.
"Some to-morrow for sorrow
Let Donelson claim!
When over the dead the dirges are said;
But to-day shall be vocal with victory's fame.
Hearts thrilling with rapture
For Donelson's capture,
Forgetting that blood like a flood
In its storming was shed.
O, matchless the glory
Of Cumberland's story,
By our cannon rehearsed,
By our bards to be versed,
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When Rebellion is dead! For joy-bells and chorus The passion comes o'er us, To ring and to sing The tidings that bring The downfall of treason in vision before us."
And their consternation matched our joy. Panic took the place of pride. The frenzy of terror and a wild, reckless flight, not without some mingling of the ridiculous, made havoc in the fair city, and since then it has been trodden under foot by contending armies. The merchants of the land weep and mourn over her, Alas! alas! that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! The merchandise of fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men, and the fruits that thy soul lusted after, are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee. For in one hour is she made desolate.
But we do not say, "Thou shalt find them no more at all." We hope better things. Years
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must pass before the marks of war are obliterated. Houses and bridges may be built again, but a tree takes its own time, and an hour cuts down what centuries alone can restore. But the restoration is begun. Business is looking up. The hotels are filling. Activity has taken the place of stagnation. A native Tennessean who accompanied us, himself lately an officer in the Union army, thinks everything looks peaceable and promising. The October elections, he says, had a very marked effect in toning down the people. They had got to be pretty arrogant and quarrelsome. There was some difficulty almost every day, but there has been scarcely any since.
"Is there individual freedom in Tennessee? Can a loyal man say what he pleases?"
"O yes. There is no danger in saying anything you like in Tennessee. I don't have any trouble. I don't keep talking just for the sake of talking, and irritating men. There is no use in that. It does all harm and no good."
"But you do not disguise, and men do not mistake, your principles?"
"Not at all. Everybody knows where I am.
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But what is the use talking? People who are haranguing all the time, and inflaming others, only keep the spot sore, and delay recovery. There are those who want to keep up agitation for their own ends. I just go about my business. That is what is needed. If a man has sense and tact, he will get along well enough, and help society over a hard place."
So far so good. To be sure perfect freedom is not, until a man can speak without molestation, even if he have not sense and tact. But all in good time. We are at least on the road to liberty.
"Have you apprehensions of further war in any case?"
"None at all. The people are tired of war. Everybody has had enough of it. What we want is peace; something settled, so that we shall know what to depend upon. We suffered greatly in the war, but we are rapidly recovering."
May the peace speedily come, and with the new life which must flow into the South when the idea of human rights shall have fairly supplanted the idea of human wrongs, Nashville
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will rise to a higher beauty and a greater prosperity than she ever saw even in the fevered visions of her short Secession madness.
Leaving Nashville, the saddest sight of all is the ridged field on the outskirts of the city, the colored soldiers' burying-ground, lying on both sides of the track,--rows upon rows of little hillocks close set side by side, some grass-grown, and others newly made, some with a white wooden slab at the head, others marked still by the rough, weather-stained board which was set in the beginning; every little hillock hiding its story, which no man shall ever read, but together spreading an historic page, which the world has already read, and which shall never be forgotten.
From eight in the morning till six in the evening we ride through a country of wild beauty and magnificence. We wind along the base of high mountains, so close to walls of solid rock a hundred feet high, that we can almost touch them from the car-window. Then we creep along an abutment on the mountain's side, that nature first set and art finished, and look down, down, down upon the river rolling below; and
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sometimes, unable to turn either to the right or the left, we rumble through the very heart of the mountain, in among the gnomes and kobolds. One such tunnel is a mile and a quarter long, and the lamps are lighted as we slowly traverse the dark passage. Our progress, happily, is never rapid. The jolting, rattling cars speak of years or hard usage, perhaps both, and we must make up in care what we lack in carriage. Everywhere we see the footprints of war. Man has indeed marked the earth with ruin. Devastation and desolation are his contribution to the scene whereto Nature has brought her rare beauty, her best uses, her fertility and her sublimity. The Earth is tumultuous with embankments, the fortifications of a night. Fragments of rough palisades, barricades of brush and stones and mingled soil, are straggling in all directions. Dismantled forts crown the hill-top. A stone monument rises by the railroad-side, so impressive in its lonely state, in the midst of all this wreck, that passengers make inquiries about it, and are told that it is a monument to those who fell in the battle of Stone River. We are crossing the battle-field ap-
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proaching Murfreesboro; and over corn and cotton fields, through the thickets, in the swamps, across the marshes, stretch the contending armies of our country, its defenders and its destroyers. Over this peaceful land, that lies now so silent and so pleasant around us, swayed and surged the blood-red tide of war in fierce ebb and flow, as now this side and now that gained momentary mastery. Every foot of ground has been struggled for to the death. This bright air has been murderous with shot and shell. This railway embankment has been the breastwork of brave men beating back their country's assailants,--a handful stemming and turning the tide of battle. Hence, in confusion and darkness and storm, fled the grand army that had come up from the South exultant, and the curtain fell upon the first act of "the Lost Cause."
Through Middle and Southern Tennessee, and down into Alabama,--sweet, softly flowing names,--lands rich in promise and possibility, but wretched and squalid. We read of privation and suffering; but the book that opens before our eyes tells a tale utterly new and unsuspected. Can one dream of a life so miserable
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and meagre as that which stagnates here? It is not life, but lifelessness. The station-villages show a huddle of dirty-white frame houses, small, disorderly, mean, set apparently with no attempt at regularity, built with no thought of symmetry or beauty, scarcely one would say of comfort or thrift,--they might be workshops rather than houses. Groups of unkempt, unshorn, unwashed men lounge on the stoops; men and village are dirty-white together.
But this is the better class of houses. By far the larger number on the road, all except those in the villages, are huts, cabins, built perhaps of logs, sometimes of the roughest boards. One shudders to think of human beings living in such houses, and content to live there. Sometimes house and barn and shed are under one roof, the shed in the middle. Oftener no barn appears. The chimneys are rudely built up from the ground and at the end of the house, with stones of various sizes gathered from the pastures, sticks, and bits of boards piled transversely, and daubed with clay. Black and white live side by side, as it is easy to see, for the door-ways are generally filled with gazers, look-
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ing even more wretched and squalid than their houses. One door is adusk with swart faces, at varying distances from the ground, and a few feet away another hovel overflows with tow-heads. The whites seem by far the most pitiable. They have a gray, earthy look, as if the Lord God had formed them of the dust of the ground, particularly of Tennessee clay, but had hardly yet breathed into their nostrils the breath of life. The dress of the women is no dress at all, and but a very partial covering. Bare feet, bare lets, lank skirts, moppy hair, is the costume. One would not mind a group or two here and there, but a country peopled by such beings, a country dotted with such dwellings, leaves a hopelessness on the soul. To ride long hour after hour past these dreary, despairing habitations, to see swarm after swarm of these pallid, dull faces,--homes with all that makes home desirable faded out, life with all that makes life lovely vanished away,--O the sudden sadness of it! It seems as if in some sort one's country had suffered change. You thought all was prosperity and progress, even if sometimes a little noisy and rude. But here are silence, submission, and degradation.
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The only architecture that relieves the eye is the architecture of the war. Scattered along the road at irregular intervals, perhaps to protect the bridges, are block-houses, I believe they are called, built of short logs with the bark still on, set upright and close together, arranged in two or three tiers, the upper ones set in from the lower, and forming broken but regular lines; they look like rustic summer-houses on a large scale, and both in color and form are picturesque and pleasing.
Suddenly we whiz by a sign,--a white-painted board fastened on the top of a high pole, with the words plainly and neatly printed in black,
a Paper.
We are out of reach almost before I read it, and I have only a few bitterly rebellious newspapers,--we make a point of buying such,--and I will not add fuel, no, not so much as a chip, or a burnt-out lucifer match, to the fire that is consuming this South country; but how I wish I had some friendly, sensible paper, full
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of news and good-will and sound politics, and a pencil and a spare minute that I might fling a message to some hungry soul! On the whole, which shall we pity most, he who dwells in this moral and social waste and wants to get out of it, or he who lives here content? The last, certainly, for suffering is a sign of life. Please throw us a paper. It is a sign-board indeed, where more is read than was ever written. It shows a face turned in the right direction. It is a faint streak of light in a dark place. I could not see the cottage, if there was one near, to tell whether it showed any marks of a better thought than its mates, but I fancied that request the work of a rebel soldier,--some lad who went into the army and saw the world, and came back again never to be quite the same as before. He will never again wrap himself stolidly in isolation. He has established relations with something beyond his own village, and he will keep open, if interrupted, communication with his new demesne.
But I cannot conceive of a Northern man in any strait having recourse to such a mode of relief. It is not the Northern way of doing things.
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I wish the train would run off the track here,--gently, just enough to give us two or three hours of waiting,--so that we could walk back along the roadside, and have a rambling talk with these people. I should like to know how life looks to them. I wonder what they think of social science, and glaciers, and reconstruction, and the origin of species, and sewing-machines, and washing powders. It must have been in some of these dismal door-yards that the Union soldier said to his friend, a little petulantly perhaps, "Miserable, Good-forsaken country! It is n't worth fighting for!" And faith replied, "But it is as good a place as any to make a stand for a principle."
Something hereabouts is very crooked, the river, or the country, or the railroad. We dip down into Alabama, then we run up to Tennessee, then a short cut into Georgia, then we scud back to Tennessee, and four times in rapid succession we cross the Tennessee River; but though we change the place, we keep the pain, pain of poverty in its naked repulsiveness, without concealment, without hope, and without shame.
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Shell mound, Hooker, Wauhatchee,--the squalid huts fade out of sight, and the late years come crowding back again. Through the twilight we are passing into the shadows of a great mountain. There is no need to be told its name. It is Lookout.