mer the edge smooth on a round stick.
Verily this is the land of make-it-yourself-or-do-without!

Yet, however destitute the mountain people may be, they are never
abject. The mordant misery of hunger is borne with a sardonic grin.
After a course of such diet as described above, a woman laughingly said
to me: "I'm gittin' the dropsy--the meat is all droppin' off my bones."
During the campaign of 1904 a brother Democrat confided to me that "The
people around hyur is so pore that if free silver war shipped in by the
carload, we-uns couldn't pay the freight." So, when a settlement is
dubbed Poverty, it is with no suggestion of whining lament, but with the
stoical good-humor that shows in Needmore, Poor Fork, Long Hungry, No
Pone, and No Fat--all of them real names.

Occasionally, as at "hog-killin' time," the poorest live in abundance;
occasionally, as at Christmas, they will go on sprees. But, taking them
the year through, the Highlanders are a notably abstemious race. When a
family is reduced to dry corn bread and black coffee unsweetened--so
much and no more--it will joke about the lack of meat and vegetables.
And, when there is meat, two mountaineers engaged in hard outdoor work
will consume less of it than a northern office-man would eat. Indeed,
the heartiness with which "furriners" stuff themselves is a wonder and a
merriment to the people of the hills. When a friend came to visit me,
the landlady giggled an aside to her husband: "Git the almanick and see
when that feller 'll full!" (as though she were bidding him look to see
when the moon would be full).

In truth, it is not so bad to be poor where everyone else is in the same
fix. One does not lose caste nor self-respect. He is not tempted by a
display of good things all around him, nor is he embittered by the
haughtiness and extravagance of the rich. And, socially, the mountaineer
is a democrat by nature: equal to any man, as all men are equal before
him. Even though hunger be eating like a slow acid into his vitals, he
still will preserve a high spirit, a proud independence, that accepts no
favor unless it be offered in a neighborly way, as man to man. I have
never seen a mountain beggar; never heard of one.

Charity, or anything that smells to him like charity, is declined with
patrician dignity or open scorn. In the last house up Hazel Creek dwelt
"old man" Stiles. He had a large family, and was on the verge of
destitution. His eldest son, a veteran from th