Mountain Homespun

Part II. The People

PART II. THE PEOPLE The longer on this earth we live, And weigh the various qualities of men, Seeing how most are fugitive Or fitful gifts at best of now and then Wind-wavered, corpse-lights, daughters of the fen, The more we feel the high, stern-featured beauty Of plain devotedness to duty, Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise. But finding amplest recompense For life's ungarlanded expense In work done squarely and unwasted days. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL I believe in working, then a body has something. AUNT LIZA It's as near honor to work as anything that ever was done. GRANNY JUDE I. A SPINNER W HEN I first saw Aunt Liza she was "upwards in sixty," but still strong and active, with brisk step and bright eyes. Later the strength was weakened and the step more slow, but to the end of her days the spirit within her looked out of those gray eyes with the keen interest in things and in people which was her birthright. One hot afternoon in July I started out from the cluster of houses where I was spending a few weeks of leisure in a busy year. Tired of my usual ride on the road that wound through the valley, I struck off over the hill to the Big Cove. There a sidetrack through a thicket of rhododendrons beguiled me and turning "Lady's" head to the left, I plunged into the green gloom. Soon the trail began to ascend, winding around the steep side of the Cove. It was a rough cart track, washed by rains and furrowed by the logs "snaked down" to the saw yard below. The trees stood close on either side, with feathery undergrowth and pale forest blossoms. "Only a logging road," I thought to myself, "we shall soon come to the end," but still the road climbed on, till, of a sudden, we came out into bright sunshine, and there, high up on a bench of the mountain side, between the great summit above and the deep Cove below, was a clearing, a field of corn, a patch of sorghum, and the quaintest of cabins. Even in the first glance an air of thrift was noticeable, the garden fence of rived palings was without a break, there were no tall weeds about the house, but flowers made a blaze of color against the gray of logs and shingles. Tying "Lady" at the edge of the woods I stepped forward and saw, coming from the spring beyond the house, Aunt Liza. We met, and looking one another in the eyes, took stock each of the other, and then and there our friendship began. She had been hoeing corn and part of her little crop had been "laid by" for the year; but with her natural courtesy she begged me to sit with her "a spell." "It won't bother me one mite, it'll give me a chance to rest up," she said. Sitting on the vine-wreathed porch we talked about the place where she had lived so long. She had come to it a bride, she told me, riding behind her husband on the mule that was their one valuable possession. She described to me the summer dawns and the nights and her delight in them. 40 MOUNTAIN HOMESPUN "It's mighty pretty and it puts feelings on to a body to see the moonshine falling on yon mountain. I just naturally love moonshine. I don't know, either, but what I like it here full as well along about daylight, when I'm up soon of a morning and the sky ferninst is all the color of them roses yonder. Here right lately there's been the prettiest kind of a big star, seems like it sorter hates to go out of sight at sun-up." We went about the little yard, fenced in to keep the chickens from "tearing up the pretties." The gourd vine on the fence was planted, she explained, to keep out snakes, who dislike the smell of these vines. "The gourds are mighty handy things to have and my children always look for me to raise them some. There's a sort of a knack about raising gourds, some folks can't have no luck with 'em, 'pears like." We compared our nomenclature: she called the cosmos, making ready to bloom, "flying ciphers...