he asked.

"Not very, mammy," he said; "but I ain't cold, nuther; an' thet's
somethin'."

It was the way in the Hyer family to make the best of things; they had
always possessed this virtue to such an extent, that they suffered
from it as from a vice. There was hardly to be found in all Southern
Tennessee a more contented, shiftless, ill-bestead family than theirs.
But there was no grumbling. Whatever went wrong, whatever was lacking,
it was "jest like aour luck," they said, and did nothing, or next to
nothing, about it. Good-natured, affectionate, humorous people; after
all, they got more comfort out of life than many a family whose surface
conditions were incomparably better than theirs. When Jos, their oldest
child and only son, broke down, had hemorrhage after hemorrhage, and
the doctor said the only thing that could save him was to go across the
plains in a wagon to California, they said, "What good luck 'Lizy was
married last year! Now there ain't nuthin' ter hinder sellin' the farm
'n goin' right off." And they sold their little place for half it was
worth, traded cattle for a pair of horses and a covered wagon, and set
off, half beggared, with their sick boy on a bed in the bottom of the
wagon, as cheery as if they were rich people on a pleasure-trip. A pair
of steers "to spell" the horses, and a cow to give milk for Jos, they
drove before them; and so they had come by slow stages, sometimes
camping for a week at a time, all the way from Tennessee to the San
Jacinto Valley. They were rewarded. Jos was getting well. Another six
months, they thought, would see him cured; and it would have gone hard
with any one who had tried to persuade either Jefferson or Maria Hyer
that they were not as lucky a couple as could be found. Had they not
saved Joshua, their son?

Nicknames among this class of poor whites in the South seem singularly
like those in vogue in New England. From totally opposite motives, the
lazy, easy-going Tennesseean and the hurry-driven Vermonter cut down all
their family names to the shortest. To speak three syllables where one
will answer, seems to the Vermonter a waste of time; to the Tennesseean,
quite too much trouble. Mrs. Hyer could hardly recollect ever having
heard her name, "Maria," in full; as a child, and until she was married,
she was simply "Ri;" and as soon as she had a house of her own, to
become a centre of hospitality and help, she was adopted by common
consent of the neighborhood,