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Savannah C OUBIER I3oT7-otocl to tlxo Xnteroata of XIo.rcii.xa Oouutr ctiicl Ilor People. VOLUMK XVI. SAVANNAH, TENNESSEE. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7. 1900. NUMBER 35. n MISS CELESTINE Bj Fielding Ridge. '- FROM the Acadian hamlet came shouts of children who were turn ing to udvantnge the last moments of daylight. I could see their little fig ures clearly outlined against the hori ron as they scampered backwards and forwards in the pasture beyond. Some time when a child's mother hnd pat ronized the village store in place of weaving her own homespun, a dash of color, a rivid red, was added to the scene. The sails of the windmill barely stirred in the spring air and as I looked, Rougette and Cherry, Moll and Hose came from the milking pan softly tink ling their bells as they passed. In a little while, I knew, lights would begin to glimmer in the village win dows, and smoke would curl up from the low mud chimneys, a pleasing sign of supper to come. Our neighbor across the way would soon gather in her little flock from the troop cf merry, shouting children, and I found myself speculating as to how many times the cry of "Angele, Jacques, venez done," would come shrilly across the pasture, before they would finally yield to parental urging. Miss Cclestine Lagralze eat opposite to me on the porch. Though conversa tion languished, it was evident that with her this was not due to a contem plation of the scene. Picturesque it was to me, but to her it was only one of those dull realities which one ac cepts w ithout thought and to which the idea of beauty does not attach. As I looked at her, I could scarcely believe that in former years she had been called "la belle Celestine Le- graize," but bo it w as. My hostess had told me but the evening before that at one time Miss Celestine had been the village belle. It was hard to credit it. True, her eyes were very large and dark, but their luster was gone and there was nbthing left of her beauty, Alter the manner of "Cojans," as they are called in that part of the world, she had aged early. The topics which we had in common were few, but Miss Celestine's social call was something of Ion? duration We had discussed flowers, chickens and vegetable gardens until my brain re fused to give me another idea. The shadows began to lengthen, and that chill which marks the approach of night became perceptible. Still Miss Celestine lingered. I could not flattel myself that it was because she had found me overwhelmingly interesting. I was aware that it was a part of her social etiquette (one handed down to her for generations) to pay this pro- tracted call. She would have thought it lacking in courtesy if she had brought her visit to a close sooner. I knew that after awhile she would rise with the time-worn excuse for not remaining still longer, "Eh bien, je m' ennuie pas mais il faut que je m'en aille" (Well, I'm not bored, but I must go). How often in other days when en tertaining "Cajan" visitors had I re joiced in the fact that I was not forced Ao confess my own feelings on the subject. It would have been hard to reconcile courtesy and candor! By chance, in a search for ideas, I mentioned Pointe des Arbres, a thriV' ing Louisiana town which I had vis ited in my rambles. 10 my surprise Miss Celestine suddenly became enthu Elastic. She leaned forward and an unexpected color came into her 6allow face. "Ah. that is a place where one might live," she murmured. I remembered Folnte des Arbres as a little town thriving in a business sense, but hopelessly provincial. I re called how it aped city customs and thus lost the charm it might have possessed) had it clung to country ways. The little Acadian hamlet was at least picturesque. I could not soy as much for the town of larger trowth. Miss Celestine anu I evidently regarded it from a different angle of vision. "Why, what ia so nice about Pointe des Arbres?" I asked with real in terest. "There are so many people there," said Miss Celestine, "anil there is the levee to walk on, where one sees all one's friends on Sunday atternoons, Then there are balls in the spring of the vear one is not dead like here I'erhans." she added hesitatingly as though she feared I might think her boastful, "you do not Know that my brother Tclesphore is a master me rhanic in Pointe des Arbres. Yes," she continued, "and he lives in the red house nqar the postoflice.' I remembered the place as a gaudy little structure with a horrible pre tense at style. The flower beds were primly defined by a border of blue and red stakes about six inches high, while two ferocious looking dogs grlnedi at one from either side of the steps. I had never been inside, but in driving past, I had often wondered if I rnieht not decide witn a reason hip certainty that within on the par lor hearth rug the counterpart of Wn doers might be found' in vivi red on a background of blue! But it ivn evident that to Jliss celestine i mind this house represented all that was beautiful. "I was never there but once," she nirl wistfully, "but some day l nop t shnll no back for a while. My brother Is married and" has three chil r.n " she nid as I 6howcd a becom i Merest in the subject, "and my sister-in-law wants me to come and live with her." Anl will vou do so?" I asked. "But no," she replied. "Who would take care of my mother? She is no The words were simple, but thrj conveyed a world of love. It was a pleasure to her, I could see, to talk of her brother Telcspbore and his prosperity. With no intention of boasting, she dwelt, with pride on his house that hud a hall down the cen ter (this seemed extraordinary to her). More than that, her sister-in- law kept a servant! When at last I told her "good-by" hhe had gained an interest for me. had met just another person with a Curcasonne." It was tlvree years later when I next saw Miss Celestine. Her mother was dead and she hnd come to live with her brother's family. Although I was only spending a few days in Pointe des Arbres, I intended to look up my old acquaintance, but before I had time to do so I met her one morning as I was on my way to the post office. She was rolling a baby carriage while two cross-looking children tugged at her skirts and in voluble French demanded her attention. She was just in front of the gaudy little house the door stood open and I caught a glimpse of the much-talked- of hull, while I mentally decided that Mmc. Telesphore had now virtually two servants! It seemed to me that MisR Celestine looked much older than when I had last seen her and gray threads were beginning to show in her heavy black hair. Her eyes had tired, dark lines beneath them as if she was often weary, but had no time to indulge in moments of repose. I wondered if her "Carcnsonne" had been all that she dreamed it to be, or if the present ever drifted away and in thought she was back again in the little Acadian hamlet tending her flowers and chickens! As we stood chatting on the brick pavement, a buggy came rattling down the street. When cne tarries awhile in roint des Arbres, one catches the spirit oi the place and looks with real interest upon the most trivial occurrences. The affairs of one's neighbors there possess un unparalleled importance; thus I .turned instinctively to catch aglimpseof the occuptint&of the buggy, The man would have attracted at tention anywhere. With his deep-set dark eyes and singularly classic fea tures, he seemed a type of the early picturesque Acadian, and I could not help thinking what a magnificent hero of Longfellow's poem "Evangeline" he would have made. I noticed little about the woman at his side, except that she was of a massive style of good looks and seemed much overdressed. "Who is that man?" I asked Miss Celestine, seeing that they had ex changed bows. "That," she said, slowly, "is Achllle Rodrigue, and that is his wife with him." "Achille Rodrigue," I repeated to myself. Why, that was the man had heard several people discussing but the evening before as I sat on the hotel porch. They seemed to be much impressed by the fact that after 13 years of unswerving devotion to one woman, he had startled every' one by marrying a widow who hnd long been keenly alive to the worldly advantages of such a match. No one seemed to know exactly why ho and his first love had never mar ried. Some one suggested that the girl had sacrificed herself to the sel fisliness of her mother, but whatever it was, Achille Rodrigue had shown a constancy which his associates nt first regarded with surprise, but aft' erwards learned to accept as part of his nature. His marriage lately, therefore, OC' casioncd no small astonishment, and there were many theories advanced on the subject. Theophile, the. blacksmith, who seemed to know Achille Rodrigue better than the others did, asserted loudly that' Achille's great, strong heart had been touched by the wid ow's open devotion to him and that he had married her out of pity, per haps wishing to bring into Borne other life the brightness his own lacked. Apart from the speakers, sitting in flic gray dusk on the hotel porch, I listened fdly to the bits of conversa' tion which floated to me on the even ing air. My thoughts drifted from Achille to the girl he had loved in those other days. I wondered what had been her fate, whether she had married some one else, or whether she still remembered. A mere specu lation on my part, since I never ex pected to see either Achille or his first love I "Yes," I said, recalling myself sud denly and turning to Miss Celestine "I have heard of Achille Rodrigue be fore," and fill at once I regretted that I had ever inquired about him. Miss Celestine was leaning down and was lifting the baby from his car riage, arranging and rearranging the pillows at his back. Her face was so averted that I could scarcely see it, but there had stolen over it an expression which made m feel that I had ruthlessly lifted th curtain from a human soul and dis' closed depths which I had no right to see. Now I understood the glamou which had been cast about the little town. After all, the memories which we treasure most are those which ere gilded with a brush of our own Tomance. She had told me that April afternoon as we sat on the porch to gether, she hoped she would go back to that enchanted land. Now she had returned and it seemed to me that since fate deals out her favors only sparingly at best, she is sometime! kinder in withholding altogether than In fulfilling In r.art.-Detroit Fre Presi OxN WHAT TO HEAD. Talmage, the noted Divine, Gives Some Timely Suggestions. The Greatest Dleeilnar of a Nation Is an Elevated I.lteraturei IU Grentent Come, an Im pure literature. Copyright, 1000, by Louis Klopsch.l Washington, Dr. Talmage, who has been spending few days in St. Petersburg, sends the following report of a discourse which will be helpful to those who have an appetite for literature and would like some rules to guide them in the selection of books and newspa pers: Text, Acts 10:19: "Many of tbem also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men, and they counted the price of them and found it 60,000 pieces of silver." Puul had been stirring up I-.phesus with some lively sermons about the sins of that place. Among the more im portant results was the fact that the citizeas brought out their had ooous and in a publio place made a bonfire of them. I see the people coming out with their arms full of Epbesian lit- rature and tossing it into the flames. hear an economist who is standing by saying: "Stop this waste, iieru urc $7,500 worth of books. Do you propose to burn them all up? If you don't want o read them yourselves, sell them and et somebody else read them." "No," said the people; "if these books are not good for us, they are not good for anybody else, and we shall stana and watch until the last leaf has burned to ashes. They have done us a world of harm, and they shall never do others harm." Hear the flames crackle and roar! Well, my friends, one of the wants of the cities is a great bonfire of bad books and newspapers. We have enough fuel to make a blaze 200 feet high. Many of the publishing houses would do well to throw Into the blaze their entire stock of goods. Bring forth the insufferable trash and put it into the fire and let it be known in the presence of God and angels and men that you are going to rid your homes of the overtopping and underlying curse of profligate btcrature. The printing press Is the mightiest agency on earth for good and for evil. The minister of the Gospel, standing in a pulpit, has a responsible position, but I do not think it is as rcsponsible- as the position of an editor or a pub lisher. At what distant point of time, at what far-out cycle of eternity, will cease the Influence of a Henry J. Ray mond, or a Horace Greeley, or a James Gordon Bennett, or a Watson Webb, or an Erastus Brooks, or a Thomas Kinsella? Take the overwhelming sta tistlcs of the circulation of the daily and weekly newspapers and then cipher if you cun how far up and how far down and how far out reach the influences of the American printing press. What is to be the Issue of all thls7 I believe the Lord intends the printing: press to be the chief means for the world s rescue and evangelization, and I think that the great last battle of the world will not be fought with swords and guns, but with types and presses, a purified and Gospel liters ture triumphing over, trampling dow and crushing out forever that which is depraved. The only way to overcome unclean literature is by scattering abroad that which is healthful. May God speed the cylinders of an honest, intelligent, aggressive, Christian print ing press. I have to tell you that the greatest blessing that ever enme to the nations is that of an elevated literature, and the greatest scourge has been that of un clean literature. This last has its vie tims in all occupations and depart mcnts. It has helped' to fill insane asylums and penitentiaries and alms houses and dens of shame. The bodies of this infection lie in the hospitals and in the graves, while their souls are be ing tossed over into a lost eternity, an avalanche of horror and despair I The London plague wus nothing to it. That counted its victims by thousands, but this modern pest has already Ehovelcd its millions into the charnel house of the morally dead. The longest rail train that ever ran over the tracks was not long enough or large enough to carry the beastliness and the putrefae tion which have been gathered up in bad books and newspapers in the last SO years. Now, it is amid such circumstances that I put a question of overmastering importance to you and your families, What books and newspapers shall we read? You see I gioup them together, A newspaper is only a book in a swifter and more portable shape, and the same rules which will apply to book reading will apply to newspaper reading. Wha shall we read? Shall our minds be th receptacle of everything that an au thor has a mind to write? Shall there be no distinction between the tree o life and the tree of deth? Shall w stoop down and drinV out of the trough which the wickedness of men has filled with pollution and shame Shall we mire in Impurity and chase fantastic will-o the-wisps across th swamps, when we might walk in th blooming gardenu of Uod I Oh, no For the sake of our present and ever lasting welfare we must make an Intel ligent and Christian choice. Standing as we do, chin deep in fic titious literature, the question tha young people are asking is: "Shall w read novels?' I reply: There are nov els thai are pure, good, Christian, ele vatlng to the heart and ennobling to the life. But I still have further to say that I believe tha 1 75 out of the 100 nov els in this day are baleful and destruc tive to the last degree. A pure work of fiction is history ana poetry combined It U) ft .istory of things around us with the licenses and the assumed names of oetry. The world can never pay the cbt which It owes to 6uch writers of fiction au Hawthorne and McKenzle nd Landon and Hunt and Arthur and others whose names are familiar to alL The follies of high life were never bet ter exposed than by Miss Edgeworlh. The memories of the past were never more faithfully embalmed than in the writings of Walter Scott. Cooper's ovelsarehealthfully redolent with the breath of the seaweed and the air of the Americon forest. Charlesi Kings ley has emitted the morbidity of the world and led a great many to appre- iate the poetry of sound health, strong muscles and fresh air. Thackeray did grand work in caricaturing the pre- enders to gentility and high blood. Dickens has built hiuown monument in is books, which are a plea for the poor and the anathema of Injustice, nd there are a score of novelistic pens to-day doing mighty work for God and ighteousness. Now, I say, books like these, read at right times and read in right propor tion with other books, cannot help but be ennobling and purifying; but, alas, fortheloathsomeand impure literature that has come In the shape of novels, like a freshet overflowing all the banks f decency and common sunset Tbey re coining from some of the most cele brated publishing houses. They are coming with recommendotionsof some of our religious newspapers. They lie on your center table to curse your children and blast with their infernal fires generations unborn. You find these books in the desk of the school miss, in the trunk of the young man, in the steamboat cabin, on the table of the hotel reception-room. You see light in your child 8 room late at night. You suddenly go in and say: What are you doing?" "I am read ing." "What are you reading?" "A book." You look at the book. It is a bad book. "Where did you get it?" "I borrowed It," Alas, there are always those abroad who like to loan to your son or daughter a bad book! Every where, everywhere, an unclean litera- tude. I charge upon it the destruction of 10,000 immortal souls, and I bid you wake up to the magnitude of the evil, I charge you in the first place to stand aloof from all books that give false pictures of life. Life is neither a tragedy nor a farce. Men are not all either knaves or heroes. Women are neither angels nor furits. And yet if you depended upon much of the lit erature of the day you would get the idea that life, instead of being some thing earnest, something practical, is a fitful and fantastic and1 extrava gant thing. How poorly prepared ore that young man ond woman for the duties of to-day who spent last night wuding through brilliant passages de scriptive of magnificent knavery and wickedness! The man will be looking all doy long for his heroine in the of fice, by the forge, in the factory, in the counting room, and he will not find her, and he will be dissatisfied. A man who gives himself up to the in discriminate reading of novels will be nerveless, inane aud a nuisance. He will be fit neither for the store, nor the shop nor the field. A woman who gives herself up to the indiscriminate reading of novels will be unfitted for the duties of wife, mother, sister, daughter. There she is, hair disheV' eled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale, hands trembling, bursting into tears at midnight over the fate of some un fortunate lover; in the daytime, when she ought to be busy, staring by the half hour at nothing biting her fin ger nails into the quick. The carpet that was plain before will be plainer after having wandered through a ro mance all night long in tessellated halls of castles. And your industrious companion will be more unattractive than ever, now that you have walked in the romance through parks with plumed princesses or lounged in the arbor with the polished desperado Oh, these confirmed novel readers They ore unfitted for this life, which is a tremendous discipline. Ihey know not how to go through the fur naces of trial through which they must pass, and they are unfitted for a world where everything we gain we nchieve by hardi and long continued work Again, I charge you to stand off from all those books which corrupt the imagination and inflame the pas lions. I do not refer now to tl-at kind of book which the villain has under his coat waiting for the school to get out, and then, lookin? both ways to see that there is no police man around the block, offers ths book to your son on Lis way home. I do not speak of that kind of literature, but that which evades the law and comes out in polished style, and with acute plot sounds the tocsin that rouses up all the baser passions of the soul. To-day, under the nostrils of the people, there Is a fetid, reck ing, unwashed literature, enough to poison all the fountains of public vir tue and smite your sons and daugh ters as with the wing of a destroying angel, and it is time that the minis ters of the Gospel blew the trumpet and rallied the forces of righteous ness, nil armed to this great battle against a depraved literature. Again, abstain from those books which are apologetic of crime. It is a sad thing that some of the best and most beautiful bookliindery and some of the finest rhetoric have been brought to make sin attractive. Vice is a horrible thing anyhow. It is born in shame, and it dies howling in the darkness. In this world it is scourged with a whip of scorpions, but afterward the thunders of God's wrath pursue it across a boundless desert, beating it with ruin and woe. When you come to paint carnalily. do not paint it as looking from behind embroidered curtains or through lat tice of royal seraglio, but ns writhing in the agonies of a ciy hospital. Curted be the books that try to wake Impurities decent and crime attractive and hypocrisy noblet Cursed be the books that swarm wltu libertines and desperadoes, who make the brain of the young peoplo whirl with vil lainy! Y'e authors who write them, ye publishers who print them, ye booksellers who distribute them, shall be cut to pieces, if not by an aroused community, then at last by the hail of Divine vengeance, which shall sweep to the lowest pit of perdition all yo murderers of souls. I tell you, though you may escape in this world, you will be ground at last under the hoof of eternnl calamities, and you will bo chuined to the rock, and you will have the vultures of despair clawing at your soul, and those whom you have destroyed will come around to torment you, and to pour hotter coals of fury upon your head, and re joice eternally in the outcry of your pain, and the howl of your damna tion. "God shall wound the hairy scalp of him that goeth on in his trespasses." The clock strikes midnight. A fair form bends over a romance. The eyes flash fire. The breath is quick and irregular. Occasionally the color clashes to the cheek and then dies out. The hands tremble as though a guar dian spirit were trying to shake the deadly book out of the grasp. Hot tears fall. She laughs with a shrill voice that drops dead at its own sound. The sweat on her brow is tha spray dashed up from the river of death, The clock strikes four, and the rosy dawn soon after begins to look through the lattice upon the pale form that looks like a detained specter of the night. Soon in a mad house she will mistake her ringlets for curling serpents and thrust her white hand through the burs of the prison and smite her head, rubbing it back as though to push the scalp from the skull, shrieking: "My brain! My brain!" Oh, stand off from that! Why will you go seund ing your way amid the reefs when there is such a vast ocean in which you may voyage, all sail set? Much of the impure pictorial liter ature is most tremendous for ruin. There is no one who can like good pictures better than I do. The quick est and most condensed way of im pressing the public mind is by pic ture. What the painter does by his brush for a few favorites, the en graver does by his knife for the mil lion. What the author accomplishes bv 50. pages the artist does by a flash, The best part of a painting that costs $10,000 you may buy for ten cents. Fine paintings belong to the aris tocracy of art. Engravings bclorg to the democracy of art. You do well to gather good pictures in your homes. But what shall I say of the pro&titn tion of art to the purposes of iniquity? These death warrants of the soul are at every street corner. They smite the vision of the young man with polln tion. Many a young man buying acopy has bought his eternal discomliture There may be enough poison in one bad picture to poison one soul and that soul may poison ten, and ten hity, ana fifty hundreds and. the hundreds thou sands, until nothing but the measuring line of eternity can tell the height and depth and ghastlinessi .and horror of the treat undoing, lhe work oi oeatn that the wieked author does in a whole book the bad engraver may do on a half side of a pictorial. Under the c-uise of pure mirth the young man buys one of these sheets. He unrolls it before his comrade amid roars of laughter, but long after the paper is cone the result may, perhaps, be seen in the blasted imaginations of those who saw it. The queen of death holds a banquet every night, and these period- icals are the invitation to her guests, Y'oung man, buy not this moral strychnine foryoursoul! 'Pick not up this nest of coiled adders for your pocket! Patronize no news stand that keeps them, llave your room origin with good engravings, but for these outrageous pictures have not one wall, not one bureau, not one pocket. A man is no better than the picture he lovea to look at. If your eyes are not pure your heart cannot be. At the news stand one can guess the character of man by the kind of pictorial he pur chases. When the devil fails to get a man to read a bad book, he sometimes succeeds in getting him to look at a bad picture. When Satan goes a-hsh ing he does not care whether it is a long line or a short line, if he only diraws his victim in. Beware of lasciv ious pictorials, youncr man, in the name of Almighty God, I charge you, Cherish good books and newspaper. Beware of bad ones. The assassin of Lord Russell declared that he was led into crime by reading one vivid rO' mance. The consecrated John Atigell James, than whom England never pro duced a better man, declared in his old age that he had never yet got over th evil effects of having for 15 minute once read a bad book. But I need not go so far off. I could tell you of acorn rade who was great hearted, noble and eenerous. lie was studying for an hon orable profession, but he had an infidel book in his trunk, and he said to m one day: "De Witt, would you like t read it?" I said: "Yes, I would." took the book and, read it only for few minutes. I was really startled with what I saw there, and I handed the book back to him and said: "Yo had better destroy that book." No, h kent it. He read it. He reread it, After awhile he gave up religion as myth. He gave up God as a nonentity He tra've up the Bible as a fable. He trave up the church of Christ as a use less institution. He gave up good mor als as being unnecessarily stringent. I have heard of him but twice in many years. Thetimebefore thelastlheardof him he was a confirmed inebriate. The last I heard of him he was coming ou of an insane asylum in body, mind and soul an a wf;il wreck. I believe that one infidel book killed him for two world A GOODLY HERITAGE In East Tennessee Valleys and Mountains. Most rrlmltlie I'enple, Who Mre Near to Nature's Heart and lleek Little of the Uutetde World Aa Interesting Folk. Within scarce two hundred miles of the center of population of the United States there is an unknown laud, and strange folk live therein. It was in 1784 that Gen. John Sevier and his band of Bturdy pioneers and ndian fighters crossed the Great inokies from Virginia, drove back the redskins, built Fort Wautaga on the banks of the Bolston and established the "State of franklin." For four years Sevier was governor of the puta tive commonwealth. Then the right ful authority of North Carolina, to. hom the territory belonged, was re asserted and the State of Iranklin ceased to exist. Some years later North Carolina ceded the section to the Fed eral government and the State of Ten nessee was organized. Gov. Sevier again became the chief executive. It was a goodly land that the brave governor and his followers reclaimed from the savages. It was a laud of rolling mountains, of fertilo valleys, f mighty streams and sparkling prings. It was a country clad in a forest wealth of giant trees with pop- ar, oak, ash, black walnut, pine and hemlock. It was underlaid with rich deposits of coal and Iron. Above all It possessed a climate of salubrity and healthfulness not excelled by any in the world. In all these more than a hundred years, in the great land of East Ten nesseeas separate and distinct in thought, people, climate, interest and employment from Middle and Western Tennessee as Maine is from Texas- there has risen but one considerable community, and that one is of com parative insignificance in size and in fluence. Depart from any point on the line of one of the few railroads that traverse the country, and a half day's journey astride of a horse will land the traveler n a region as primeval and untamed as when the good Sevier laid down his life for it in 1815. He will find few roads worthy the name; he will cross rivers by primitive fords or ferries; he will see vast timber-clad mountain sides; he will feast his eyes on scenery unspoiled by the hand of man. He will find the agile mountain deer, and great bronze turkeys, and lesser animals and fowls stalking the woods, almost un afraid of their arch enemy. On the higher levels the brooks will be found swarming with trout, speckled beauties who know naught of sportman's fly and reel. Depart but a few miles from any line of transportation and East Tennessee is an unknown land! The mountaineers of Virginia and Western North Carolina, who emigrated and made their homes on the western slope of the Great Smokies, were a clannish people, loyal to their friends and implacable to their enemies. W ith the extermination or withdrawal of the Indian they scattered along down the rich bottom lands of the I rench Broad and Holston and made home for them selves. To a large extent the women have always been the indifferent tillers of the soil; Idling with "fice," gun aud fishing rod has been the masculine em ployment In this earlier settled por tion of East Tennessee some of the amenities of civilization have prevailed of a later day, still it is crude, unlearned aud primitive. Still Farther Westward. As time progressed some of the more adventurous spirits again moved west ward moved across the Holston and the Clinch, across the intervening mountain ranges, away to the rough and broken surface of the Cumberland plateau, where the tempestuous Big South Fork of the Cumberland had carved a ragged channel for itself be tween stupendous sandstone cliffs. Be yond this narrow yalley they never ventured, for mountaineers they were by birth and education, and to go fur ther was to leave the mountains be hind. Here, for a distance of many miles, along the main stream or in the little laurel entangled "coves," through which some mountain torrent had burst its way, numbers settled. Little, low doored, stickchimneyed log "shacks" were built, and the occasional narrow tracts of arable land were forced to yield sparse "craps" of corn and vege- tables. Available soil for the produc tion of the necessities of life was far from being as plentiful as on the slopes and bottom lands of the Great Smokies, which they had abandoned. But here, in the fastnesses of the Cumberlands, for well toward a century, this strange people has existed in the self-same way, The sons and daughters have married and intermarried, until the entire re gion is made up of "kin-folks," ultra clannish and exclusive. Of the outside world they know little and care less. Schools are scarcely known, and few can even read. But these strange denizens of the half-desert mountains, these forgotten and unknown inhabitants, though sur rounded on all sides by progressive and prosperous sections poorer in substan tial wealth than the veriest gutter-snipe of the great cities have worth and vir- tuea and happiness. They are deeply religions, extremely hospitable and, ac cording to their understanding, honest, Scarce ten miles can be traversed that does not disclose the log "church house." News of the coming of the Itinerant preacher man" is hailed with joy, and the congregation present at these semi-occisional gatherings of- times represent the total population of a score of square miles. These meet ing! consist not only of religious ex hortation and prayer, but the funeral rites of all who have departed this life since the preacher's last visit are duly celealed. Often it happens as well that a wholesale wedding takes place on these occasions many swains em bracing the oppo: tunity of having the itinerant place his official stamp and sanction on their connubial state. No traveler is ever turned aside from the door of the lowly "shack" of the poor white of the East Tennessee moun tain district The salutation of "howdy," followed by invitation to "light and rest yer hat," is invariably a 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. , lloneit ai the Average. As the world goes, these poople are honest The contents of an unlocked and unattended house would be safe from molestation for all time. The meum et teum of the razor-back hogs that run at large and gain a precarious existence, save at the period when the forest sheds its manna of mast, is al ways respected. However, the obliga tion of a debt rests very lightly on the shoulders of the average "native." If by chance he becomes possessed of a little money from the sale of a few rail road ties, a 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 moun 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 man's 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 drled-up spring, a "tide" in the river, muddy roads, a broken cart, or what not it would seem that the mountaineer has no standing whatsoever with the Al mighty. In connection with one piece of prop erty only has he no respect for pro prietary rights, and that is a tree. Wherever he can find it, and success fully dispose of it, that tree is his, in alienably as the water he drinks from the sparkling spring, the ambient air he breathes or the glorious sunshine that envelopes him in its tender em brace the greater part of each day. During the civil war, notwithstand ing the defection of Tennessee, it was this very section that supplied more volunteers to the Union cause, popula tion 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 Tenne&seans 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, nere they live on and on "The world forgetting, by the world for got." American Lumberman. t No Room For Extravagance. The pay of the Chinese soldier indi cates that he must be an even more eccnomical person than the New Zea land bushman, who was able to live on 4 8s a year (on which he kept a horse and entertained). The Chinese private at 3 8s per annum is extremely inex pensive compared with the Englishman at 77, the Russian at 48 and the Italian the cheapest of European sol diersat 41. On this three-halfpence a day there is little fear of bursts of dissipation, though thecalvaryman has an extra 8s a month for his horse, out of which he replaces the animal if it be killed. London Chronicle. Son-ln-Law'i Veaeon. "It is claimed, you know, that light ning never strikes twice in the same place." "Yes, I'm quite well aware there is such a statement, and I'm afraid it is true." "Why do you say it in that dismal way?" "My wife's mother was struck by lightning seventeen years ago and es caped by a miracle. And Hint's why I say I'm afraid the old saying is too true." Cleveland Plain Dealer. Hetty Green's I'atrlntlim. Mrs. Hetty Green's reply to the ques tion as to whether ber daughter would marry a titled foreigner was a refresh ing one. "She will not marry such a man. I would rather have her marry a young American with brains, energy and confidence in hrmself than any oue else." It is a healthy, hearty fuith in our country that Americans love. In. dianapolis Press. What a Whale Welglin. nave you any idea of the size of the common Greenland whale? Nillson, the zoologist, estimates the full-grown animal to average 100 tons, or 224,000 pounds. That is to say, a whale weighs as much as about eighty elephants or 400 bears. Of course some run larger than this. There are tales among old whalers of whales 110 feet long, and weighing 150 tons. But such are not seen in these days. A 70-foot whale is a big one now. New York Evening World. Boomerang Effect. "Yaas, I heed Jones' speech," said the man with the wondering whiskers. "1 didn't have any idea he was so good an' so smart till I heerd 'im tell it." "I suppose you will vote for him now?" asked the postmaster. "No, I allow I wun't He's too dera good to be wasted in a little old coun ty office c to," Iad anapy'.! ('ret longer young- jwa". ..;.-,-. -