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Intellectual Property The Law of Trademarks Copyrights Patents and Trade Secrets 5th Edition Bouchoux Solutions Manualdownload

The document discusses the principles of copyright law, emphasizing the protection of creators' rights and the financial implications of copyright industries in the U.S. It outlines the evolution of copyright law, including the 1976 Copyright Act and subsequent amendments, and explains the advantages of copyright registration. Additionally, it addresses the balance between authors' rights and public access to creative works.

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100% found this document useful (9 votes)
67 views40 pages

Intellectual Property The Law of Trademarks Copyrights Patents and Trade Secrets 5th Edition Bouchoux Solutions Manualdownload

The document discusses the principles of copyright law, emphasizing the protection of creators' rights and the financial implications of copyright industries in the U.S. It outlines the evolution of copyright law, including the 1976 Copyright Act and subsequent amendments, and explains the advantages of copyright registration. Additionally, it addresses the balance between authors' rights and public access to creative works.

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© © All Rights Reserved
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CHAPTER 9
Foundations of Copyright Law

LECTURE NOTES

Major points to be addressed in presenting the chapter materials include the following:

1. Copyright principles derive from the desire of authors to protect against unauthorized
copying of their books and to share in the financial rewards of book publishers and
printers.

2. Copyright law protects the creators of books, music, and art by providing them with
the exclusive right to reproduce their works and derive income from them (for a
limited period of time). Protecting these rights fosters creative efforts. Artists will not
invest time and effort into composing a song or writing a novel if others can
reproduce the song or book at will without compensating its creator.

3. Copyright has a significant financial impact in the United States with approximately 7
percent of the gross domestic product deriving from copyright industries. Similarly,
copyright piracy costs U.S. businesses a significant amount each year.

4. Copyright law stems from the Constitution, which provides that Congress shall have
the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited
times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and
discoveries. The present Copyright Act is the Act of 1976. The term “writings” has
been held to be broad enough to protect new forms of expression and emerging
technologies such as computer programs.

5. Copyright rights are governed exclusively by federal law. All cases alleging copyright
infringement must be brought in federal court.

6. Copyright law attempts to balance two conflicting interests: the interests of authors in
protecting their works from unauthorized copying and the interest of the public in
having the greatest possible access to works of authorship.

7. Until January 1, 1978 (the effective date of the 1976 Copyright Act), the United
States had a dual system of copyright protection in that a distinction was drawn
between published and unpublished works. Until 1978, authors had a perpetual
common law right to their unpublished works. Once the work was published,
however, the common law perpetual copyright was extinguished and protection was
afforded for up to 56 years. Publication is the distribution of copies of a work to the
public for sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.

72
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learning management system for classroom use.
8. The 1976 Act eliminated the distinction between unpublished and published works
and provides that a work is protected as soon as it is created or fixed in some tangible
form. Thus, even an unpublished manuscript is governed by the 1976 Act because it
is created when the author sets the words on paper or “fixes” them in a word
processor.

9. Copyright rights arise from the creation of a work in fixed form and not from
publication or registration. No permission or application with the U.S. Copyright
Office is required to secure copyright protection; however, just as securing a
trademark registration from the USPTO provides certain advantages to mark owners,
securing a copyright registration from the U.S. Copyright Office provides certain
advantages, including the following:

• Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.

• Registration is necessary for works of U.S. origin before an infringement suit may
be brought.

• If made within five years of publication, registration will establish prima facie
evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the
certificate.

• If registration is made within three months after publication of the work or prior
to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney’s fees are
available to the owner (otherwise, only actual damages and lost profits are
awarded).

• Registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the
U.S. Customs and Border Protection for protection against the importation of
infringing copies of the work.

10. The United States belongs to the Berne Union, an organization of more than 165
nations devoted to the protection of literary and artistic works. The Berne Convention
requires member nations to treat citizens of member nations as they do their own
citizens with regard to copyrights.

11. Under the Berne treaty, there is no longer a requirement in the United States to use a
copyright notice (©).

12. Congress amended the Copyright Act in 1998 to provide that the duration of
copyright is 70 years from an author’s death (previously, the term was 50 years from
the author’s death).

13. Another significant amendment to copyright law is the 1998 Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, which forbids individuals from circumventing copyright protection
systems and limits the liability of Internet service providers for copyright infringement.
73
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learning management system for classroom use.
14. The U.S. Copyright Office is a division of the Library of Congress and is located in
Washington, D.C. Its primary function is to issue copyright registrations and serve as
a depository for materials in which copyright is claimed. It provides a variety of
information and has a very useful website. The Copyright Office is implementing an
electronic registration system that will enable applicants to register copyrights
electronically.

Case Study: Fit Forever’s employees have written a jingle (Fit For Now—Fit Forever!)
and a script for a television commercial promoting the services of the fitness centers.
Neither one of these works has a copyright notice and neither one of them has been
registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Activities: Indicate whether the jingle and script are protectable under copyright law.
Yes, both works are protectable under copyright law. Copyright law protects
songs and written words. The fact that these are commercial works (rather
than purely literary works) is irrelevant. As soon as the works were created
in a fixed form (being put on paper or typed) they were protected under
copyright law. Although obtaining a copyright registration affords a
copyright owner certain advantages, it is not necessary to obtain a copyright
registration for a work to be protected under copyright law. Moreover, it is
not necessary for a copyrighted work to have a copyright notice in order to
be protectable.

Using Internet Resources – Chapter 9

Access the website for the U.S. Copyright Office for the first four questions.
1. Locate Circular 1, entitled “Copyright Basics.”
a. May a citizen or national of another country obtain a copyright in the
United States?
Yes, he/she can.

b. Is an improvisational speech (that has not been written or typed) eligible


for copyright protection?
No, it’s not.

2. Locate “FAQs About Copyright.”


a. Can you copyright your domain name?
Yes.

b. Must you use your real name on a copyright application form?


No. One may use a “pseudonymous” name and check the box
for this on the application form.

c. Can you submit a CD-ROM of your work?


Yes, one can.

74
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learning management system for classroom use.
d. Is the title of Harper Lee’s new novel Go Set a Watchman copyrightable?
No. Titles of books are not protectable under copyright law.

3. Review the Fee Schedule. What is the fee to register a copyright using a paper
form?
The fee is $85.

4. Locate Fact Sheet 119, entitled “Dramatic Works: Choreography, Pantomimes,


and Scripts.”
a. Can the title of the television program Modern Family be copyrighted?
No, it can’t.

b. Can the yoga pose “Downward Facing Dog” be copyrighted?


No, it can’t.

5. Locate the federal statutes pertaining to Copyrights. (Specifically, Chapter 1,


relating to the Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright.) Can the federal
government copyright federal statutes and reports that it issues? Give answer and
cite the statute that governs this matter.
No. 17 U.S.C. § 105 provides that the government may not obtain
copyright in such works.

Discussion Questions – Chapter 9

1. Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) was the author of the
autobiographical book I am Spock, written in 1995. When does copyright
protection for this book end?
Copyright protection lasts for the author’s life plus 70 years. Thus
copyright protection will end in 2085.

2. Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was the author of the novel Little Women. May
you prepare a screenplay for a new film based on this novel? Discuss.
Yes. Even under the present, very generous period of duration of
copyright law, protection for the work has expired and it has fallen
into the public domain. Thus, anyone may use the work, prepare a
derivative work based on it, etc.

3. Michelle Obama has been keeping a journal of her activities and thoughts about
her years in the White House. At present she has no plans to publish any book
based on these musings. Is the work protectable under copyright law? Discuss.
Yes. The work is protectable under copyright law as soon as it is
created in fixed form (when Ms. Obama wrote the words in her
journal). No registration with or permission from the Copyright
Office is needed to protect the work.

75
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learning management system for classroom use.
4. Your cousin is a musician. You recently discovered some hastily scribbled song
lyrics written by him on a piece of scratch paper. Is the work protectable under
copyright law?
Yes. Once again, the work is protected as soon as it is written on the
scratch paper. The fact that the work is written on scratch paper is of
no importance. It exists in tangible form and is thus protectable.

5. Describe the balance that must be reached between giving artists and authors the
right to exploit their creative works and the right of the public to have access to
these works.
Creators of works must be given a certain period of time/monopoly so
they can exploit their works and earn revenue on their works.
However, they should not be allowed exclusive rights in perpetuity. The
public should have access to the work at some time. Thus, the balance
of copyright law is to give copyright authors a limited period of time
(generally, life of the author plus 70 years) to exploit the work, and then
the work falls into the public domain so that it is free for all to use.

Putting It Into Words – Chapter 9

Draft a paragraph to be included in a letter to a client in Ohio explaining why the client
should apply for a copyright registration for her book of photographs of the Grand
Canyon, which was published last month.
Although your book of photographs of the Grand Canyon is protected under
U.S. copyright law and there is no legal requirement that you apply for a
copyright registration, obtaining a copyright registration will afford you
several advantages, including the following:
• Registration establishes a public record of your copyright
rights;
• Before you may bring a lawsuit alleging infringement, the
work must be registered;
• If the registration is made before or within five years of
publication of the work, the registration will constitute prima
facie evidence in court of the validity of the registration and
the facts stated in the certificate;
• If registration is made within three months after the work is
published (or prior to an infringement of the work), you will be
entitled to obtain statutory damages and attorney’s fees in any
action alleging infringement of the work; and
• Registration will allow you to record the copyright registration
with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to bar the
importation of any infringing copies of your book.
Moreover, obtaining a copyright registration is relatively straightforward and
inexpensive (namely, $35 for an online application). In view of the significant
advantages to and ease of obtaining a copyright registration, we thus strongly
recommend that you apply for a copyright registration of your work.
76
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different content
they are the preferred homes of those who have taste for the old in
native history, and pride in family associations and traditions. On the
thinned, open landscape nothing stands out with a more pathetic air
[212]
of nakedness than one of these stone houses, long since abandoned
and fallen into ruin. Under the Kentucky sky houses crumble and die
without seeming to grow old, without an aged toning down of
colors, without the tender memorials of mosses and lichens, and of
the whole race of clinging things. So not until they are quite
overthrown does Nature reclaim them, or draw once more to her
bosom the walls and chimneys within whose faithful bulwarks, and
by whose cavernous, glowing recesses, our great-grandmothers and
great-grandfathers danced and made love, married, suffered, and
fell asleep.

Neither to the house of logs, therefore, nor to that of stone must we


look for the earliest embodiment of positive taste in domestic
architecture. This found its first, and, considering the exigencies of
the period, its most noteworthy expression in the homestead of
brick. No finer specimen survives than that built in 1796, on a plan
furnished by Thomas Jefferson to John Brown, who had been his law
student, remained always his honored friend, and became one of the
founders of the commonwealth. It is a rich landmark, this old
manor-place on the bank of the Kentucky River, in Frankfort. The
great hall with its pillared archway is wide enough for dancing the
Virginia reel. The suites of high, spacious rooms; the carefully carved
wood-work of the window-casings and the doors; the tall, quaint [213]
mantel-frames; the deep fireplaces with their shining fire-dogs and
fenders of brass, brought laboriously enough on pack-mules from
Philadelphia; the brass locks and keys; the portraits on the walls—all
these bespeak the early implantation in Kentucky of a taste for
sumptuous life and entertainment. The house is like a far-
descending echo of colonial Old Virginia.

Famous in its day—for it is already beneath the sod—and built not of


wood, nor of stone, nor of brick, but in part of all, was "Chaumière,"
the home of David Meade during the closing years of the last, and
the early years of the present, century. The owner, a Virginian who
had been much in England, brought back with him notions of the
baronial style of country-seat, and in Jessamine County, some ten
miles from Lexington, built a home that lingers in the mind like some
picture of the imagination. It was a villa-like place, a cluster of rustic
cottages, with a great park laid out in the style of Old World
landscape-gardening. There were artificial rivers spanned by bridges,
and lakes with islands crowned by temples. There were terraces and
retired alcoves, and winding ways cut through flowering thickets. A
fortune was spent on the grounds; a retinue of servants was
employed in nurturing their beauty. The dining-room, wainscoted
with walnut and relieved by deep window-seats, was rich with the
family service of silver and glass; on the walls of other rooms [214]
hung
family portraits by Thomas Hudson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two
days in the week were appointed for formal receptions. There
Jackson and Monroe and Taylor were entertained; there Aaron Burr
was held for a time under arrest; there the old school showed itself
in buckles and knee-breeches, and rode abroad in a yellow chariot
with outriders in blue cloth and silver buttons.

Near Lexington may be found a further notable example of early


architecture in the Todd homestead, the oldest house in the region,
built by the brother of John Todd, who was Governor of Kentucky
Territory, including Illinois. It is a strong, spacious brick structure
reared on a high foundation of stone, with a large, square hall and
square rooms in suites, connected by double doors. To the last
century also belongs the low, irregular pile that became the
Wickliffe, and later the Preston, house in Lexington—a striking
example of the taste then prevalent for plain, or even commonplace,
exteriors, if combined with interiors that touched the imagination
with the suggestion of something stately and noble and courtly.

These are a few types of homes erected in the last century. The
wonder is not that such places exist, but that they should have been
found in Kentucky at such a time. For society had begun as the
purest of democracies. Only a little while ago the people had been
shut up within a stockade. Stress of peril and hardship had levelled
[215]
the elements of population to more than a democracy: it had knit
them together as one endangered human brotherhood. Hence the
sudden, fierce flaring up of sympathy with the French Revolution;
hence the deep re-echoing war-cry of Jacobin emissaries. But
scarcely had the wave of primitive conquest flowed over the land,
and wealth followed in its peaceful wake, before life fell apart into
the extremes of social caste. The memories of former position, the
influences of old domestic habits were powerful still; so that, before
a generation passed, Kentucky society gave proof of the continuity
of its development from Virginia. The region of the James River, so
rich in antique homesteads, began to renew itself in the region of
the blue-grass. On a new and larger canvas began to be painted the
picture of shaded lawns, wide portals, broad staircases, great halls,
drawing-rooms, and dining-rooms, wainscoting, carved wood-work,
and waxed hard-wood floors. In came a few yellow chariots,
morocco-lined and drawn by four horses. In came the powder, the
wigs, and the queues, the ruffled shirts, the knee-breeches, the
glittering buckles, the high-heeled slippers, and the frosty brocades.
Over the Alleghanies, in slow-moving wagons, came the massive
mahogany furniture, the sunny brasswork, the tall silver
candlesticks, the nervous-looking, thin legged little pianos. In came
old manners and old speech and old prides: the very Past gathered[216]
together its household gods and made an exodus into the Future.

Without due regard to these essential facts the social system of the
State must ever remain poorly understood. Hitherto they have been
but little considered. To the popular imagination the most familiar
type of the early Kentuckian is that of the fighter, the hunter, the
rude, heroic pioneer and his no less heroic wife: people who left all
things behind them and set their faces westward, prepared to be
new creatures if such they could become. But on the dim historic
background are the stiff figures of another type, people who were
equally bent on being old-fashioned creatures if such they could
remain. Thus, during the final years of the last century and the first
quarter of the present one, Kentucky life was richly overlaid with
ancestral models. Closely studied, the elements of population by the
close of this period somewhat resembled a landed gentry, a robust
yeomanry, a white tenantry, and a black peasantry. It was only by
degrees—by the dying out of the fine old types of men and women,
by longer absence from the old environment and closer contact with
the new—that society lost its inherited and acquired its native
characteristics, or became less Virginian and more Kentuckian.
Gradually, also, the white tenantry waned and the black peasantry
waxed. The aristocratic spirit, in becoming more Kentuckian, unbent
somewhat its pride, and the democratic, in becoming [217] more
Kentuckian, took on a pride of its own; so that when social life
culminated with the first half-century, there had been produced over
the Blue-grass Region, by the intermingling of the two, that widely
diffused and peculiar type which may be described as an aristocratic
democracy, or a democratic aristocracy, according to one's choosing
of a phrase. The beginnings of Kentucky life represented not simply
a slow development from the rudest pioneer conditions, but also a
direct and immediate implantation of the best of long-established
social forms. And in nowise did the latter embody itself more
persuasively and lastingly than in the building of costly homes.

III

With the opening of the present century, that taste had gone on
developing. A specimen of early architecture in the style of the old
English mansion is to be found in "Locust Grove," a massive and
enduring structure—not in the Blue-grass Region, it is true, but
several miles from Louisville—built in 1800 for Colonel Croghan,
brother-in-law of Gen. George Rogers Clark; and still another
remains in "Spring Hill," in Woodford County, the home of Nathaniel
Hart, who had been a boy in the fort at Boonesborough. [218] Until
recently a further representative, though remodelled in later times,
survived in the Thompson place at "Shawnee Springs," in Mercer
County.
Consider briefly the import of such country homes as these
—"Traveller's Rest," "Chaumière," "Spring Hill," and "Shawnee
Springs." Built remotely here and there, away from the villages or
before villages were formed, in a country not yet traversed by
limestone highways or even by lanes, they, and such as they, were
the beacon-lights, many-windowed and kind, of Kentucky
entertainment. "Traveller's Rest" was on the great line of emigration
from Abingdon through Cumberland Gap. Its roof-tree was a boon of
universal shelter, its very name a perpetual invitation to all the
weary. Long after the country became thickly peopled it, and such
places as it, remained the rallying-points of social festivity in their
several counties, or drew their guests from remoter regions. They
brought in the era of hospitalities, which by-and-by spread through
the towns and over the land. If one is ever to study this trait as it
flowered to perfection in Kentucky life, one must look for it in the
society of some fifty years ago. Then horses were kept in the
stables, servants were kept in the halls. Guests came uninvited,
unannounced; tables were regularly set for surprises. "Put a plate,"
said an old Kentuckian of the time with a large family connection
—"always put a plate for the last one of them down to the youngest
[219]
grandchild." What a Kentuckian would have thought of being asked
to come on the thirteenth of the month and to leave on the
twentieth, it is difficult to imagine. The wedding-presents of brides
were not only jewels and silver and gold, but a round of balls. The
people were laughed at for their too impetuous civilities. In whatever
quarter of the globe they should happen to meet for the hour a
pleasing stranger, they would say in parting, "And when you come to
Kentucky, be certain to come to my house."

Yet it is needful to discriminate, in speaking of Kentucky hospitality.


Universally gracious towards the stranger, and quick to receive him
for his individual worth, within the State hospitality ran in circles,
and the people turned a piercing eye on one another's social
positions. If in no other material aspect did they embody the history
of descent so sturdily as in the building of homes, in no other trait of
home life did they reflect this more clearly than in family pride.
Hardly a little town but had its classes that never mingled; scarce a
rural neighborhood but insisted on the sanctity of its salt-cellar and
the gloss of its mahogany. The spirit of caste was somewhat Persian
in its gravity. Now the Alleghanies were its background, and the
heroic beginnings of Kentucky life supplied its warrant; now it
overleaped the Alleghanies, and allied itself to the memories of
deeds and names in older States. But if some professed to[220] look
down, none professed to look up. Deference to an upper class, if
deference existed, was secret and resentful, not open and servile.
The history of great political contests in the State is largely the
victory and defeat of social types. Herein lies a difficulty: you touch
any point of Kentucky life, and instantly about it cluster antagonisms
and contradictions. The false is true; the true is false. Society was
aristocratic; it was democratic; it was neither; it was both. There
was intense family pride, and no family pride. The ancestral
sentiment was weak, and it was strong. To-day you will discover the
increasing vogue of an heraldica Kentuckiensis, and to-day an
absolute disregard of a distinguished past. One tells but partial
truths.

Of domestic architecture in a brief and general way something has


been said. The prevailing influence was Virginian, but in Lexington
and elsewhere may be observed evidences of French ideas in the
glasswork and designs of doors and windows, in rooms grouped
around a central hall with arching niches and alcoves; for models
made their way from New Orleans as well as from the East. Out in
the country, however, at such places as those already mentioned,
and in homes nearer town, as at Ashland, a purely English taste was
sometimes shown for woodland parks with deer, and, what was
more peculiarly Kentuckian, elk and buffalo. This taste, once so
[221]
conspicuous, has never become extinct, and certainly the landscape
is receptive enough to all such stately purposes. At "Spring Hill" and
elsewhere, to-day, one may stroll through woods that have kept a
touch of their native wildness. There was the English love of lawns,
too, with a low matted green turf and wide-spreading shade-trees
above—elm and maple, locust and poplar—the English fondness for
a home half hidden with evergreens and creepers and shrubbery, to
be approached by a leafy avenue, a secluded gate-way, and a
gravelled drive; for highways hardly admit to the heart of rural life in
Kentucky, and way-side homes, to be dusted and gazed at by every
passer-by, would little accord with the spirit of the people. This
feeling of family seclusion and completeness also portrayed itself
very tenderly in the custom of family graveyards, which were in time
to be replaced by the democratic cemetery; and no one has ever
lingered around those quiet spots of aged and drooping cedars, fast-
fading violets, and perennial myrtle, without being made to feel that
they grew out of the better heart and fostered the finer senses.

Another evidence of culture among the first generations of


Kentuckians is to be seen in the private collections of portraits,
among which one wanders now with a sort of stricken feeling that
the higher life of Kentucky in this regard never went beyond its early
promise. Look into the meagre history of native art, and you[222] will
discover that nearly all the best work belongs to this early time. It
was possible then that a Kentuckian could give up law and turn to
painting. Almost in the wilderness Jouett created rich, luminous,
startling canvases. Artists came from older States to sojourn and to
work, and were invited or summoned from abroad. Painting was
taught in Lexington in 1800. Well for Jouett, perhaps, that he lived
when he did; better for Hart, perhaps, that he was not born later:
they might have run for Congress. One is prone to recur time and
again to this period, when the ideals of Kentucky life were still
wavering or unformed, and when there was the greatest receptivity
to outside impressions. Thinking of social life as it was developed,
say in and around Lexington—of artists coming and going, of the
statesmen, the lecturers, the lawyers, of the dignity and the energy
of character, of the intellectual dinners—one is inclined to liken the
local civilization to a truncated cone, to a thing that should have
towered to a symmetric apex, but somehow has never risen very
high above a sturdy base.
But to speak broadly of home life after it became more typically
Kentuckian, and after architecture began to reflect with greater
uniformity the character of the people. And here one can find
material comfort, if not æsthetic delight; for it is the whole picture of
human life in the Blue-grass Region that pleases. Ride east[223] and
west, or north and south, along highway or by-way, and the picture
is the same. One almost asks for relief from the monotony of a
merely well-to-do existence, almost sighs for the extremes of squalor
and splendor, that nowhere may be seen, and that would seem so
out of place if anywhere confronted. On, and on, and on you go,
seeing only the repetition of field and meadow, wood and lawn, a
winding stream, an artificial pond, a sunny vineyard, a blooming
orchard, a stone-wall, a hedge-row, a tobacco barn, a warehouse, a
race-track, cattle under the trees, sheep on the slopes, swine in the
pools, and, half hidden by evergreens and shrubbery, the homelike,
unpretentious houses that crown very simply and naturally the entire
picture of material prosperity. They strike you as built not for their
own sakes. Few will offer anything that lays hold upon the memory,
unless it be perhaps a front portico with Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian
columns; for the typical Kentuckian likes to go into his house
through a classic entrance, no matter what inharmonious things may
be beyond; and after supper on summer evenings nothing fills him
with serener comfort than to tilt his chair back against a classic
support, as he smokes a pipe and argues on the immortality of a
pedigree.

On the whole, one feels that nature has long waited for a more
exquisite sense in domestic architecture; that the immeasurable
possibilities of delightful landscape have gone unrecognized [224]or
wasted. Too often there is in form and outline no harmony with the
spirit of the scenery, and there is dissonance of color—color which
makes the first and strongest impression. The realm of taste is
prevailingly the realm of the want of taste, or of its meretricious and
commonplace violations. Many of the houses have a sort of
featureless, cold, insipid ugliness, and interior and exterior
decorations are apt to go for nothing or for something worse. You
repeat that nature awaits more art, since she made the land so kind
to beauty; for no transformation of a rude, ungenial landscape is
needed. The earth does not require to be trimmed and combed and
perfumed. The airy vistas and delicate slopes are ready-made, the
park-like woodlands invite, the tender, clinging children of the
summer, the deep, echoless repose of the whole land, all ask that art
be laid on every undulation and stored in every nook. And there are
days with such Arcadian colors in air and cloud and sky—days with
such panoramas of calm, sweet pastoral groups and harmonies
below, such rippling and flashing of waters through green
underlights and golden interspaces, that the shy, coy spirit of beauty
seems to be wandering half sadly abroad and shunning all the
haunts of man.

But little agricultural towns are not art-centres. Of itself rural life
does not develop æsthetic perceptions, and the last, most difficult
thing to bring into the house is this shy, elusive spirit of beauty.[225]
The
Kentucky woman has perhaps been corrupted in childhood by
tasteless surroundings. Her lovable mission, the creation of a
multitude of small, lovely objects, is undertaken feebly and blindly.
She may not know how to create beauty, may not know what beauty
is. The temperament of her lord, too, is practical: a man of
substance and stomach, sound at heart, and with an abiding sense
of his own responsibility and importance, honestly insisting on sweet
butter and new-laid eggs, home-made bread and home-grown
mutton, but little revelling in the delicacies of sensibility, and with no
more eye for crimson poppies or blue corn-flowers in his house than
amid his grain. Many a Kentucky woman would make her home
beautiful if her husband would allow her to do it.

Amid a rural people, also, no class of citizens is more influential than


the clergy, who go about as the shepherds of the right; and without
doubt in Kentucky, as elsewhere, ministerial ideals have wrought
their effects on taste in architecture. Perhaps it is well to state that
this is said broadly, and particularly of the past. The Kentucky
preachers during earlier times were a fiery, zealous, and austere set,
proclaiming that this world was not a home, but wilderness of sin,
and exhorting their people to live under the awful shadow of
Eternity. Beauty in every material form was a peril, the seductive[226]
garment of the devil. Wellnigh all that made for æsthetic culture was
put down, and, like frost on venturesome flowers, sermons fell on
beauty in dress, entertainment, equipage, houses, church
architecture, music, the drama, the opera—everything. The meek
young spirit was led to the creek or pond, and perhaps the ice was
broken for her baptism. If, as she sat in the pew, any vision of her
chaste loveliness reached the pulpit, back came the warning that she
would some day turn into a withered hag, and must inevitably be
"eaten of worms." What wonder if the sense of beauty pined or went
astray, and found itself completely avenged in the building of such
churches? And yet there is nothing that even religion more surely
demands than the fostering of the sense of beauty within us, and
through this also we work towards the civilization of the future.

IV

Many rural homes have been built since the war, but the old type of
country life has vanished. On the whole, there has been a strong
movement of population towards the towns, rapidly augmenting
their size. Elements of showiness and freshness have been added to
their once unobtrusive architecture. And, in particular, that[227] art
movement and sudden quickening of the love of beauty which swept
over this country a few years since has had its influence here. But
for the most part the newer homes are like the newer homes in
other American cities, and the style of interior appointment and
decoration has few native characteristics. As a rule the people love
the country life less than of yore, since an altered social system has
deprived it of much leisure, and has added hardships. The
Kentuckian does not regard it as part of his mission in life to feed
fodder to stock; and servants are hard to get, the colored ladies and
gentlemen having developed a taste for urban society.
What is to be the future of the Blue-grass Region? When population
becomes denser and the pressure is felt in every neighborhood, who
will possess it? One seems to see in certain tendencies of American
life the probable answer to this question. The small farmer will be
bought out, and will disappear. Estates will grow fewer and larger.
The whole land will pass into the hands of the rich, being too
precious for the poor to own. Already here and there one notes the
disposition to create vast domains by the slow swallowing up of
contiguous small ones. Consider in this connection the taste already
shown by the rich American in certain parts of the United States to
found a country-place in the style of an English lord. Consider, too,
that the landscape is much like the loveliest of rural England;[228]that
the trees, the grass, the sculpture of the scenery are such as make
the perfect beauty of a park; that the fox, the bob-white, the
thoroughbred, and the deer are indigenous. Apparently, therefore,
one can foresee the distant time when this will become the region of
splendid homes and estates that will nourish a taste for out-door
sports and offer an escape from the too-wearying cities. On the
other hand, a powerful and ever-growing interest is that of the
horse, racer or trotter. He brings into the State his increasing capital,
his types of men. Year after year he buys farms, and lays out tracks,
and builds stables, and edits journals, and turns agriculture into
grazing. In time the Blue-grass Region may become the Yorkshire of
America.

But let the future have its own. The country will become theirs who
deserve it, whether they build palaces or barns. One only hopes that
when the old homesteads have been torn down or have fallen into
ruins, the tradition may still run that they, too, had their day and
deserved their page of history. [229]

[230]

[231]
THROUGH CUMBERLAND GAP ON

HORSEBACK

resh fields lay before us that summer of 1885. We had left


the rich, rolling plains of the Blue-grass Region in central
Kentucky and set our faces towards the great
Appalachian uplift on the south-eastern border of the
State. There Cumberland Gap, that high-swung gate-way through
the mountain, abides as a landmark of what Nature can do when
she wishes to give an opportunity to the human race in its
migrations and discoveries, without surrendering control of its liberty
and its fate. It can never be too clearly understood by those who are
wont to speak of "the Kentuckians" that this State has within its
boundaries two entirely distinct elements of population—elements
distinct in England before they came hither, distinct during more
than a century of residence here, and distinct now in all that goes to
constitute a separate community—occupations, manners and
customs, dress, views of life, civilization. It is but a short distance
from the blue-grass country to the eastern mountains; but in
traversing it you detach yourself from all that you have ever
experienced, and take up the history of English-speaking men[232] and
women at the point it had reached a hundred or a hundred and fifty
years ago.

Leaving Lexington, then, which is in the midst of the blue-grass


plateau, we were come to Burnside, where begin the navigable
waters of the Cumberland River, and the foot-hills of the Cumberland
Mountains.

Burnside is not merely a station, but a mountain watering-place. The


water is mostly in the bed of the river. We had come hither to get
horses and saddle-bags, but to no purpose. The hotel was a sort of
transition point between the civilization we had left and the primitive
society we were to enter. On the veranda were some distinctly
modern and conventional red chairs; but a green and yellow gourd-
vine, carefully trained so as to shut out the landscape, was a
genuine bit of local color. Under the fine beeches in the yard was
swung a hammock, but it was made of boards braced between
ropes, and was covered with a weather-stained piece of tarpaulin.
There were electric bells in the house that did not electrify; and near
the front entrance three barrels of Irish potatoes, with the tops off,
spoke for themselves in the absence of the bill of fare. After supper,
the cook, a tall, blue-eyed, white fellow, walked into my room
without explanation, and carried away his guitar, showing that he
had been wont to set his sighs to music in that quarter of the
premises. The moon hung in that part of the heavens, and no doubt [235]
[234]
[233]
ogled him into many a midnight frenzy. Sitting under a beech-tree in
the morning, I had watched a child from some city, dressed in white
and wearing a blue ribbon around her goldenish hair, amuse herself
by rolling old barrels (potato barrels probably, and she may have had
a motive) down the hill-side and seeing them dashed to pieces on
the railway track below. By-and-by some of the staves of one fell in,
the child tumbled in also, and they all rolled over together. Upon the
whole, it was an odd overlapping of two worlds. When the railway
was first opened through this region a young man established a fruit
store at one of the stations, and as part of his stock laid in a bunch
of bananas. One day a mountaineer entered. Arrangements
generally struck him with surprise, but everything else was soon
forgotten in an adhesive contemplation of that mighty aggregation
of fruit. Finally he turned away with this comment: "Damn me if
them ain't the damnedest beans I ever seen!"
OLD FERRY AT POINT
BURNSIDE.

The scenery around Burnside is beautiful, and the climate bracing. In


the valleys was formerly a fine growth of walnut, but the principal
timbers now are oak, ash, and sycamore, with yellow pine. I heard
of a wonderful walnut tree formerly standing, by hiring vehicles to
go and see which the owner of a livery-stable made three hundred
and fifty dollars. Six hundred were offered for it on the spot. The
hills are filled with the mountain limestone—that Kentucky oolite
[236]of
which the new Cotton Exchange in New York is built. Here was
Burnside's depot of supplies during the war, and here passed the
great road—made in part a corduroy road at his order—from
Somerset, Kentucky, to Jacksborough, over which countless stores
were taken from central Kentucky and regions farther north into
Tennessee. Supplies were brought up the river in small steamboats
or overland in wagons, and when the road grew impassable, pack-
mules were used. Sad sights there were in those sad days: the
carcasses of animals at short intervals from here to Knoxville, and
now and then a mule sunk up to his body in mire, and abandoned,
with his pack on, to die. Here were batteries planted and rifle-pits
dug, the vestiges of which yet remain; but where the forest timbers
were then cut down a vigorous new growth has long been
reclaiming the earth to native wildness, and altogether the aspect of
the place is peaceful and serene. Doves were flying in and out of the
cornfields on the hill-sides; there were green stretches in the valleys
where cattle were grazing; and these, together with a single
limestone road that wound upward over a distant ridge, recalled the
richer scenes of the blue-grass lands.

Assured that we should find horses and saddlebags at Cumberland


Falls, we left Burnside in the afternoon, and were soon set down at a
station some fifteen miles farther along, where a hack conveyed us
[237]
to another of those mountain watering-places that are being opened
up in various parts of eastern Kentucky for the enjoyment of a
people that has never cared to frequent in large numbers the
Atlantic seaboard.

As we drove on, the darkness was falling, and the scenery along the
road grew wilder and grander. A terrific storm had swept over these
heights, and the great trees lay uptorn and prostrate in every
direction, or reeled and fell against each other like drunken giants—a
scene of fearful elemental violence. On the summits one sees the
tan-bark oak; lower down, the white oak; and lower yet,[238] fine
specimens of yellow poplar; while from the valleys to the crests is a
dense and varied undergrowth, save where the ground has been
burned over, year after year, to kill it out and improve the grazing.
Twenty miles to the south-east we had seen through the pale-tinted
air the waving line of Jellico Mountains in Tennessee. Away to the
north lay the Beaver Creek and the lower Cumberland, while in front
of us rose the craggy, scowling face of Anvil Rock, commanding a
view of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. The utter silence and
heart-oppressing repose of primeval nature was around us. The
stark white and gray trunks of the immemorial forest dead linked us
to an inviolable past. The air seemed to
blow upon us from over regions
illimitable and unexplored, and to be
fraught with unutterable suggestions.
The full-moon swung itself aloft over the
sharp touchings of the green with
spectral pallor; and the evening-star
stood lustrous on the western horizon in
depths of blue as cold as a sky of
Landseer, except where brushed by
tremulous shadows of rose on the verge
of the sunlit world. A bat wheeled
upward in fantastic curves out of his
undiscovered glade. And the soft tinkle
of a single cow-bell far below marked
the invisible spot of some lonely human
habitation. By-and-by we lost sight of
the heavens altogether, so dense and
interlaced the forest. The descent of the
hack appeared to be into a steep abyss
of gloom; then all at once we broke "DAMN ME IF THEM [239]
from the edge of the woods into a flood AIN'T THE DAMNEDEST
of moonlight; at our feet were the BEANS I EVER SEEN!"
whirling, foaming rapids of the river; in
our ears was the roar of the cataract, where the bow-crowned mist
rose and floated upward and away in long trailing shapes of ethereal
lightness.
MOONRISE ON
CUMBERLAND RIDGE.

The Cumberland River throws itself over the rocks here with a fall of
seventy feet, or a perpendicular descent of sixty-two, making a
mimic but beautiful Niagara. Just below, at Eagle Falls, it drops over
its precipice in a lawny cascade. The roar of the cataract, under
favorable conditions, may be heard up and down stream a distance
of ten or twelve miles. You will not find in mountainous Kentucky a
more picturesque spot.

While here, we had occasion to extend our acquaintance with native


types. Two young men came to the hotel, bringing a bag of small,
hard peaches to sell. Slim, slab-sided, stomachless, and serene, [240]
mild, and melancholy, they might have been lotos-eaters, only the
suggestion of poetry was wanting. Their unutterable content came
not from the lotus, but from their digestion. If they could sell their
peaches, they would be happy; if not, they would be happy. What
they could not sell, they could as well eat; and since no bargain was
made on this occasion, they took chairs on the hotel veranda,
opened the bag, and fell to. I talked with the Benjamin of his tribe:

"Is that a good 'coon dog?"

"A mighty good 'coon dog. I hain't never seed him whipped by a
varmint yit."

"Are there many 'coons in this country?"

"Several 'coons."

"Is this a good year for 'coons?"

"A mighty good year for 'coons. The woods is full o' varmints."

"Do 'coons eat corn?"


"'Coons is bad as hogs on corn, when they git tuk to it."

"Are there many wild turkeys in this country?"

"Several wild turkeys."

"Have you ever caught many 'coons?"

"I've cotched high as five 'coons out o' one tree."

"Are there many foxes in this country?"

"Several foxes."

"What's the best way to cook a 'coon?"

"Ketch him and parbile him, and then put him in cold water and[241]
soak
him, and then put him in and bake him."

"Are there many hounds in this country?"

"Several hounds."

Here, among other discoveries, was a linguistic one—the use of


"several" in the sense of a great many, probably an innumerable
multitude, as in the case of the 'coons.

They hung around the hotel for hours, as beings utterly exempt from
all the obligations and other phenomena of time.

"Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?"

The guide bespoken the evening before had made arrangements for
our ride of some eighteen miles—was it not forty?—to Williamsburg;
and in the afternoon made his appearance with three horses. Of
these one was a mule, with a strong leaning towards his father's
family. Of the three saddles one was a side-saddle, and another was
an army saddle with refugee stirrups. The three beasts wore among
them some seven shoes. My own mincing jade had none. Her name
must have been Helen of Troy (all horses are named in Kentucky),
so long ago had her great beauty disappeared. She partook with me
of the terror which her own movements inspired; and if there ever
was a well-defined case in which the man should have carried the
beast, this was the one. While on her back I occasionally apologized
[242]
for the injustice of riding her by handing her some sour apples, the
like of which she appeared never to have tasted before, just as it
was told me she had never known the luxury of wearing shoes. It is
often true that the owner of a horse in this region is too poor or too
mean to have it shod.

Our route from Cumberland Falls lay through what is called "Little
Texas," in Whitley County—a wilderness some twenty miles square. I
say route, because there was not always a road; but for the guide,
there would not always have been a direction. Rough as the country
appears to one riding through it on horseback, it is truly called "flat
woods country;" and viewed from Jellico Mountains, whence the
local elevations are of no account, it looks like one vast sweep of
sloping, densely-wooded land. Here one may see noble specimens of
yellow poplar in the deeper soil at the head of the ravines; pin-oak,
and gum and willow, and the rarely beautiful wild-cucumber. Along
the streams in the lowlands blooms the wild calacanthus, filling the
air with fragrance, and here in season the wild camellia throws open
its white and purple splendors.

It was not until we had passed out of "Little Texas" and reached
Williamsburg, had gone thence to Barbourville, the county-seat of
the adjoining county of Knox, and thence again into Bell County, that
we stopped at an old way-side inn on the Wilderness road [243] from
[245]
[244]
Kentucky through Cumberland Gap. Around us were the mountains—
around us the mountaineers whom we wished to study.
CUMBERLAND FALLS.

II

Straight, slim, angular, white bodies; average or even unusual


stature, without great muscular robustness; features regular and
colorless; unanimated but intelligent; in the men sometimes fierce;
in the women often sad; among the latter occasional beauty of a
pure Greek type; a manner shy and deferential, but kind and
fearless; eyes with a slow, long look of mild inquiry, or of general
listlessness, or of unconscious and unaccountable melancholy; the
key of life a low minor strain, losing itself in reverie; voices
monotonous in intonation; movements uninformed by nervousness—
these are characteristics of the Kentucky mountaineers. Living to-day
as their forefathers lived a hundred years ago; hearing little of the
world, caring nothing for it; responding feebly to the influences of
civilization near the highways of travel in and around the towns, and
latterly along the lines of railway communication; but sure to live
here, if uninvaded and unaroused, in the same condition for a
hundred years to come; lacking the spirit of development from
within; devoid of sympathy with that boundless and ungovernable [246]
activity which is carrying the Saxon race in America from one state
to another, whether better or worse. The origin of these people, the
relation they sustain to the different population of the central
Kentucky region—in fine, an account of them from the date of their
settling in these mountains to the present time, when, as it seems,
they are on the point of losing their isolation, and with it their
distinctiveness—would imprison phases of life and character valuable
alike to the special history of this country and to the general history
of the human mind.

The land in these mountains is all claimed, but it is probably not all
covered by actual patent. As evidence, a company has been formed
to speculate in lands not secured by title. The old careless way of
marking off boundaries by going from tree to tree, by partly
surveying and partly guessing, explains the present uncertainty.
Many own land by right of occupancy, there being no other claim.
The great body of the people live on and cultivate little patches
which they either own, or hold free, or pay rent for with a third of
the crop. These not unfrequently get together and trade farms as
they would horses, no deed being executed. There is among them a
mobile element—squatters—who make a hill-side clearing and live
on it as long as it remains productive; then they move elsewhere.
This accounts for the presence throughout the country of abandoned[249]
[248]
[247]
cabins, around which a new forest growth is springing up. Leaving
out of consideration the few instances of substantial prosperity, the
most of the people are abjectly poor, and they appear to have no
sense of accumulation. The main crops raised are corn and potatoes.
In the scant gardens will be seen patches of cotton, sorghum, and
tobacco; flax also, though less than formerly. Many make insufficient
preparation for winter, laying up no meat, but buying a piece of
bacon now and then, and paying for it with work. In some regions
the great problem of life is to raise two dollars and a half during the
year for county taxes. Being pauper counties, they are exempt from
State taxation. Jury fees are highly esteemed and much sought after.
The manufacture of illicit mountain whiskey—"moonshine"—was
formerly, as it is now, a considerable source of revenue; and a
desperate sub-source of revenue from the same business has been
the betrayal of its hidden places. There is nothing harder or more
dangerous to find now in the mountains than a still.
NATIVE TYPES.

Formerly digging "sang," as they call ginseng, was a general


occupation. For this China was a great market. It has nearly all been
dug out except in the wildest parts of the country, where entire
families may still be seen "out sangin'." They took it into the towns
in bags, selling it at a dollar and ten cents—perhaps a dollar and a
half—a pound. This was mainly the labor of the women and[250] the
children, who went to work barefooted, amid briers and chestnut
burs, copperheads and rattlesnakes. Indeed, the women prefer to go
barefooted, finding shoes a trouble and constraint. It was a sad day
for the people when the "sang" grew scarce. A few years ago one of
the counties was nearly depopulated in consequence of a great
exodus into Arkansas, whence had come the news that "sang" was
plentiful. Not long since, during a season of scarcity in corn, a local
store-keeper told the people of a county to go out and gather all the
mandrake or "May-apple" root they could find. At first only the
women and children went to work, the men holding back with
ridicule. By-and-by they also took part, and that year some fifteen
tons were gathered, at three cents a pound, and the whole country
thus got its seed-corn. Wild ginger was another root formerly much
dug; also to less extent "golden-seal" and "bloodroot." The sale of
feathers from a few precarious geese helps to eke out subsistence.
Their methods of agriculture—if methods they may be styled—are
the most primitive. Ploughing is commonly done with a "bull-
tongue," an implement hardly more than a sharpened stick with a
metal rim; this is often drawn by an ox, or a half-yoke. But one may
see women ploughing with two oxen. Traces are made of hickory or
papaw, as also are bed-cords. Ropes are made of lynn bark. In some
counties there is not so much as a fanning-mill, grain being [251]
winnowed by pouring it from basket to basket, after having been
threshed with a flail, which is a hickory withe some seven feet long.
Their threshing-floor is a clean place on the ground, and they take
up grain, gravel, and dirt together, not knowing, or not caring for,
the use of a sieve.

INTERIOR OF A
MOUNTAINEER'S HOME.

The grain is ground at their homes in a hand tub-mill, or one made


by setting the nether millstone in a bee-gum, or by cutting a hole in
a puncheon-log and sinking the stone into it. There are, however,
[252]
other kinds of mills: the primitive little water-mill, which may be
considered almost characteristic of this region; in a few places
improved water-mills, and small steam-mills. It is the country of
mills, farm-houses being furnished with one as with coffee-pot or
spinning-wheel. A simpler way of preparing corn for bread than by
even the hand-mill is used in the late summer and early autumn,
while the grain is too hard for eating as roasting-ears, and too soft
to be ground in a mill. On a board is tacked a piece of tin through
which holes have been punched from the under side, and over this
tin the ears are rubbed, producing a coarse meal, of which "gritted
bread" is made. Much pleasure and much health they get from their
"gritted bread," which is sweet and wholesome for a hungry man.

Where civilization has touched on the highways and the few


improved mills have been erected, one may see women going to mill
with their scant sacks of grain, riding on a jack, a jennet, or a
bridled ox. But this is not so bad as in North Carolina, where, Europa
like, they ride on bulls.

Aside from such occupations, the men have nothing to do—a little
work in the spring, and nine months' rest. They love to meet at the
country groceries and cross-roads, to shoot matches for beef,
turkeys, or liquor, and to gamble. There is with them a sort of annual
[253]
succession of amusements. In its season they have the rage for
pitching horseshoes, the richer ones using dollar pieces. In
consequence of their abundant leisure, the loneliness of the
mountains, and their bravery and vigor, quarrels are frequent and
feuds deadly. Personal enmities soon serve to array entire families in
an attitude of implacable hostility; and in the course of time relatives
and friends take sides, and a war of extermination ensues. The
special origins of these feuds are various: blood heated and temper
lost under the influence of "moonshine;" reporting the places and
manufacturers of this; local politics; the survival of resentments
engendered during the Civil War. These, together with all causes that
lie in the passions of the human heart and spring from the
constitution of all human society, often make the remote and
insulated life of these people turbulent, reckless, and distressing.

But while thus bitter and cruel towards each other, they present to
strangers the aspect of a polite, kind, unoffending, and most
hospitable race. They will divide with you shelter and warmth and
food, however scant, and will put themselves to trouble for your
convenience with an unreckoning, earnest friendliness and good-
nature that is touching to the last degree. No sham, no pretence; a
true friend, or an open enemy. Of late they have had much occasion
to regard new-comers with distrust, which, once aroused, is difficult
[254]
to dispel; and now they will wish to know you and your business
before treating you with that warmth which they are only too glad to
show.

The women do most of the work. From the few sheep, running wild,
which the farm may own, they take the wool, which is carded,
reeled, spun, and woven into fabrics by their own hands and on their
rude implements. One or two spinning-wheels will be found in every
house. Cotton from their little patches they clean by using a
primitive hand cotton-gin. Flax, much spun formerly, is now less
used. It is surprising to see from what appliances they will bring
forth exquisite fabrics: garments for personal wear, bedclothes, and
the like. When they can afford it they make carpets.

They have, as a rule, luxuriant hair. In some counties one is struck


by the purity of the Saxon type, and their faces in early life are often
handsome. But one hears that in certain localities they are prone to
lose their teeth, and that after the age of thirty-five it is a rare thing
to see a woman whose teeth are not partly or wholly wanting. The
reason is not apparent. They appear passionately fond of dress, and
array themselves in gay colors and in jewelry (pinchbeck), if their
worldly estate justifies the extravagance. Oftener, if young, they
have a modest, shy air, as if conscious that their garb is not
decorous. Whether married or unmarried, they show much natural [257]
[256]
[255]
diffidence. It is told that in remoter districts of the mountains they
are not allowed to sit at the table with the male members of the
household, but serve them as in ancient societies. Commonly, in
going to church, the men ride and carry the children, while the
women walk. Dancing in some regions is hardly known, but in others
is a favorite amusement, and in its movements men and women
show grace. The mountain preachers oppose it as a sin.
MOUNTAIN COURTSHIP.

Marriages take place early. They are a fecund race. I asked them
time and again to fix upon the average number of children to a
family, and they gave as the result seven. In case of parental
opposition to wedlock, the lovers run off. There is among the people
a low standard of morality in their domestic relations, the delicate
privacies of home life having little appreciation where so many
persons, without regard to age or sex, are crowded together within
very limited quarters.

The dwellings—often mere cabins with a single room—are built of


rough-hewn logs, chinked or daubed, though not always. Often
there is a puncheon floor and no chamber roof. One of these
mountaineers, called into court to testify as to the household goods
of a defendant neighbor, gave in as the inventory, a string of
pumpkins, a skillet without a handle, and "a wild Bill." "A wild Bill" is
a bed made by boring auger-holes into a log, driving sticks[258] into
these, and overlaying them with hickory bark and sedge-grass—a
favorite couch. The low chimneys, made usually of laths daubed, are
so low that the saying, inelegant though true, is current, that you
may sit by the fire inside and spit out over the top. The cracks in the
walls are often large enough to give ingress and egress to child or
dog. Even cellars are little known, potatoes sometimes being kept
during winter in a hole dug under the hearthstone. More frequently
a trap-door is made through the plank flooring in the middle of the
room, and in a hole beneath are put potatoes, and, in case of
wealth, jellies and preserves. Despite the wretchedness of their
habitations and the rigors of mountain climate, they do not suffer
with cold, and one may see them out in snow knee-deep clad in low
brogans, and nothing heavier than a jeans coat and hunting-shirt.

The customary beverage is coffee, bitter and black, not having been
roasted but burnt. All drink it, from the youngest up. Another
beverage is "mountain tea," which is made from the sweet-scented
golden-rod and from winter-green—the New England checkerberry.
These decoctions they mollify with home-made sorghum molasses,
which they call "long sweetening," or with sugar, which by contrast is
known as "short sweetening."

Of home government there is little or none, boys especially setting


aside at will parental authority; but a sort of traditional sense of[259]
duty
and decorum restrains them by its silent power, and moulds them
into respect. Children while quite young are often plump to
roundness, but soon grow thin and white and meagre like the
parents. There is little desire for knowledge or education. The
mountain schools have sometimes less than half a dozen pupils
during the few months they are in session. A gentleman who wanted
a coal bank opened, engaged for the work a man passing along the
road. Some days later he learned that his workman was a
schoolteacher, who, in consideration of the seventy-five cents a day,
had dismissed his academy. [260]
A FAMILY BURYING-
GROUND.

Many, allured by rumors from the West, have migrated thither, but
nearly all come back, from love of the mountains, from indisposition
to cope with the rush and vigor and enterprise of frontier life. Theirs,
they say, is a good lazy man's home.

Their customs respecting the dead are interesting. When a husband


dies his funeral sermon is not preached, but the death of the wife is
awaited, and vice versa. Then a preacher is sent for, friend and
neighbor called in, and the respect is paid both together. Often two
or three preachers are summoned, and each delivers a sermon.
More peculiar is the custom of having the services for one person
repeated; so that the dead get their funerals preached several times,
months and years after their burial. I heard of the pitiful story of two
sisters who had their mother's funeral preached once every summer
as long as they lived. You may engage the women in mournful
conversation respecting the dead, but hardly the men. In strange
contrast with this regard for ceremonial observances is their neglect
of the graves of their beloved, which they do not seem at all to visit
when once closed, or to decorate with those symbols of affection
which are the common indications of bereavement.

Nothing that I have ever seen is so lonely, so touching in its neglect


and wild, irreparable solitude, as one of these mountain graveyards.
On some knoll under a clump of trees, or along some hill-side where
[261]
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