eing from the mountings of Tennessee, were rather
startled one night, when Jim Irwin, homely, stooped and errandless,
silently appeared in their family circle about the front door. They had
lived where it was the custom to give a whoop from the big road before one
passed through the palin's and up to the house. Otherwise, how was one to
know whether the visitor was friend or foe?

From force of habit, Old Man Simms started for his gun-rack at Jim's
appearance, but the Lincolnian smile and the low slow speech, so much like
his own in some respects, ended that part of the matter. Besides, Old Man
Simms remembered that none of the Hobdays, whose hostilities somewhat
stood in the way of the return of the Simmses to their native hills, could
possibly be expected to appear thus in Iowa.

"Stranger," said Mr. Simms, after greetings had been exchanged, "you're
right welcome, but in my kentry you'd find it dangersome to walk in
thisaway."

"How so?" queried Jim Irwin.

"You'd more'n likely git shot up some," replied Mr. Simms, "onless you
whooped from the big road."

"I didn't know that," replied Jim. "I'm ignorant of the customs of other
countries. Would you rather I'd whoop from the big road--nobody else
will."

"I reckon," replied Mr. Simms, "that we-all will have to accommodate
ourse'ves to the ways hyeh."

Evidently Jim was the Simms' first caller since they had settled on the
little brushy tract whose hills and trees reminded them of their
mountains. Low hills, to be sure, with only a footing of rocks where the
creek had cut through, and not many trees, but down in the creek bed, with
the oaks, elms and box-elders arching overhead, the Simmses could imagine
themselves beside some run falling into the French Broad, or the Holston.
The creek bed was a withdrawing room in which to retire from the eternal
black soil and level corn-fields of Iowa. What if the soil was so poor, in
comparison with those black uplands, that the owner of the old wood-lot
could find no renter? It was better than the soil in the mountains, and
suited the lonesome Simmses much more than a better farm would have done.
They were not of the Iowa people anyhow, not understood, not their
equals--they were pore, and expected to stay pore--while the Iowa people
all seemed to be either well-to-do, or expecting to become so. It was much
more agreeable to the Simmses to retire to the back wood-lot farm with the
creek bed running through it.

Jim Irwin