aken the nation to consciousness of its duties toward a region that it
has so long and so singularly neglected.

The worst enemies of the mountain people are those public men who,
knowing the true state of things, yet conceal or deny the facts in order
to salve a sore local pride, encourage the supine fatalism of "what must
be will be," and so drug the highlanders back into their Rip Van Winkle
sleep.

CHAPTER XII

HOME FOLKS AND NEIGHBOR PEOPLE

Despite the low standard of living that prevails in the backwoods, the
average mountain home is a happy one, as homes go. There is little worry
and less fret. Nobody's nerves are on edge. Our highlander views all
exigencies of life with the calm fortitude and tolerant good-humor of
Bret Harte's southwesterner, "to whom cyclones, famine, drought, floods,
pestilence and savages were things to be accepted, and whom disaster, if
it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall."

It is a patriarchal existence. The man of the house is lord. He takes no
orders from anybody at home or abroad. Whether he shall work or visit or
roam the woods with dog and gun is nobody's affair but his own. About
family matters he consults with his wife, but in the end his word is
law. If Madame be a bit shrewish he is likely to tolerate it as natural
to the weaker vessel; but if she should go too far he checks her with a
curt "Shet up!" and the incident is closed.

"The woman," as every wife is called, has her kingdom within the house,
and her man seldom meddles with its administration. Now and then he may
grumble "A woman's allers findin' somethin' to do that a man can't see
no sense in;" but, then, the Lord made women fussy over trifles--His
ways are inscrutable--so why bother about it?

The mountain farmer's wife is not only a household drudge, but a
field-hand as well. She helps to plant, hoes corn, gathers fodder,
sometimes even plows or splits rails. It is the commonest of sights for
a woman to be awkwardly hacking up firewood with a dull axe. When her
man leaves home on a journey he is not likely to have laid in wood for
the stove or hearth: so she and the children must drag from the
hillsides whatever dead timber they can find.

Outside the towns no hat is lifted to maid or wife. A swain would
consider it belittled his dignity. At table, if women be seated at all,
the dishes are passed first to the men; but generally the wife stands by
and serves. There is no conscious discourtes