olden, lord of himself and his surroundings--that is the wine
of life to a mountaineer.

Such a man cannot stand it to be bossed around. If he works for another,
it must be on a footing of equality. Poverty may oblige him to take a
turn on some "public works" (by which he means any job where many men
work together, such as lumbering or railroad building), but he must be
handled with more respect than is shown common laborers elsewhere. At a
sharp order or a curse from the foreman he will flare back: "That's
enough out o' you!" and immediately he will drop his tools. Generally he
will stay on a job just long enough to earn money for immediate needs;
then back to the farm he goes.

Bear in mind that in the mountains every person is accorded the
consideration that his own qualities entitle him to, and no whit more.
It has always been so. Our Highlanders have neither memory nor tradition
of ever having been herded together, lorded over, persecuted or denied
the privileges of free-men. So, even within their clans, there is no
servility nor any headship by right of birth. Leaders arise, when
needed, only by virtue of acknowledged ability and efficiency. In this
respect there is no analogy whatever to the clan system of ancient
Scotland, to which the loose social structure of our own highlanders has
been compared.

We might expect such fiery individualism to cool gradually as population
grew denser; but, oddly enough, crowding only intensifies it in the shy
backwoodsman. Neighborliness has not grown in the mountains--it is on
the wane. There are to-day fewer log-rollings and house-raisings, fewer
husking bees and quilting parties than in former times; _and no new
social gatherings have taken their place_. Our mountain farmer, seeing
all arable land taken up, and the free range ever narrowing, has grown
jealous and distrustful, resenting the encroachment of too many sharers
in what once he felt was his own unfenced domain. And so it has come
about that the very quality that is his strength and charm as a man--his
staunch individualism--is proving his weakness and reproach as a
neighbor and citizen. The virtue of a time out-worn has become the vice
of an age new-born.

The mountaineers are non-social. As they stand to-day, each man
"fighting for his own hand, with his back against the wall," they
recognize no social compact. Each one is suspicious of the other. Except
as kinsmen or partisans they cannot pull together. Speak