The Schoolma'am of Sandy Ridge

SANDY RIDGE MISSION, June 1, 1918.
DEAR BOY,—
Here I am on this wonderful mountain-top, the new schoolma’am of Sandy Ridge. From where I am sitting on our little two-by-four porch, I look out on peak after peak, covered with a dense growth of laurel and ivy. Through the haze I can see the Blue Ridge, fifty miles away, in Tennessee and North Carolina. One actually has to see these mountains to realize why the people have become so isolated. The mountains are like so many hummocks, with hollows in between, each little hollow being a separate unit walled in on all sides. It ’s fine to be up at the top of the world, with this indescribably refreshing air and expanse of view. At night the stars seem so close, I feel as it I could reach up and touch them.
The nearest mining-camp, Dante, is five miles down a steep, rough trail through the underbrush and creek-bed. We get our supplies from Montgomery Ward. These have to be hauled up the mountain from the freight station seven miles away. There are few wagons because the roads are so impassable. Winter and summer they use sleds. My trunk and box of books came rattling up the mountain yesterday tied to a sled pulled by the thinnest mule I have ever laid eyes on.
The Mission consists of a two-room log cabin for us to live in and a thirtyby-fifty-foot log schoolhouse. First of all, I must tell you how it all started. Several years ago some of our neighbors went down to Dante to peddle berries. Deaconess Williams was so kind to them that they became friends, and she consented to come up and have Sunday-School for them. There was only one little one-room cabin available. When it was pleasant they had Sunday-School out under the big walnut tree. When it rained, somehow they scrouged into the cabin. With its one door and porthole of a window, the cabin had once been a favorite place for newly married couples to start housekeeping. Then it was used as a stable, until it became Sandy Ridge Mission. Deaconess had the old puncheon floor taken out and made into a porch, and a new door and window cut.
For two summers in this cabin the two workers lived and held SundaySchool, and cookingand sewing-classes, and even entertained the Bishop and Archdeacon. Then the neighbors suggested that they would get out logs for a schoolhouse and help raise it, if Deaconess would provide a teacher. So the schoolhouse was built. I shall have the second term of school ever taught here. Using one wall of the cabin, and one wall of the schoolhouse, a connecting room was put up, with five sides and no corner a right, angle. We call this Middlesex, and use it for a kitchen and living-room. It has a lovely old sandstone fireplace and broad, low windows, through which we can see for miles on either side of the Ridge. A huge denim-covered screen marks where the living-room ends and the kitchen begins. We have been putting up some Venetian blue prints on the gray, weather-beaten walls. With the shelves full of our own precious books, we are developing a decidedly cozy atmosphere. The old cabin, contrary to mountain custom, we use exclusively for our boudoir. Rain or shine, we eat out on our little puncheon-floored porch, where this prairie-raised mortal feeds on view as well as food.

July 28, 1918.
I have just come from Troy Howard’s, five miles around the Ridge. His daughter Ellie is dying, by inches, of tuberculosis. Her mother died of it six years ago, leaving Ellie, then ten years old, to bring up a family of six younger children. At that time, Deaconess suggested that she find homes for some of the children. Troy asked them. They said, ‘We’ll hoe corn and work all the time if we kin only stay with Poppy’ (the mountain children’s name for father). So Ellie struggled along. For the last six months she has been in bed, while a younger sister takes up the burden. Whenever Ellie has a bad spell, they send word to the neighbors. All come who can, for fear Troy might be alone when she dies. They have a great fear of death. The older people come out of courtesy and sympathy. The young people come to spark and have a good time. Her friends have just as much as buried Ellie already. In speaking of someone being very sick, the expression is, ‘We’re lookin’ fer ’em to die.’ A woman resembling the description of Betsy Trotwood was there this afternoon.
‘Law, it’s a sight, how you ’ve fallen away!’ she said to Ellie, cautiously, standing way off by the door.
Josiah Howard, Ellie’s uncle, and I came back on horseback about eleventhirty, leaving Mrs. Josiah and Miss W— to stay the rest of the night. The moon cast curious shadows in the woods. A heavy, languid humidity enveloped us as we rode along. Josiah can read very little and write less, but he has that innate fineness that shows itself in his manners and conversation. We are very fortunate to have him for our nearest neighbor.
The people think it strange that we are not afraid to stay alone at night. They have the primitive fear of darkness. Only the young bucks think of being out after dark. They often spend the whole night, just scouting around, or building a fire and going to sleep beside it. Some nights they collect all the boys and dogs on the Ridge, and have fox-hunts. Such yipping and yelling you never heard, up one ridge and down another. They think it great sport these glorious moonlight nights.
Another question that puzzles the mountaineer mind is, why are we not married ?

July 29, 1918.
Miss W—got in at 6.30 A. M. We had a combination breakfast and dinner at noon. Then I set out for the funeral preaching. The custom is to have a funeral preaching every two or three years for all the people who have died during that time. Each one is buried at the time of his death, but the preaching is reserved for a later day, when it is convenient for more people and more preachers to get there. Sometimes a man will be married again, and his second wife will be one of the chief mourners at his first wife’s funeral preaching. This custom is dying out to some extent. The burying and preaching together are becoming more common. To-day there were five people to be preached for and five preachers. There was much shouting. Most of it was knocks at all the other denominations and praise for the old Baptists. One has to be baptized to be saved, and one may be saved just as often as there is enough water in the creek and a preacher handy to perform the ceremony.
This is the most democratic community, I believe, that exists. You see, there is only one class. People exchange work, but no man works for another as a servant. Being as remote and isolated from the rest of the world as if they were on a desert island, they have no conception of any other condition of society. I am having sent to you Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders. It is the best book published on the mountaineers. So far as I have been able to observe, he is very accurate.
Until one realizes how much hard work it requires to get their daily bread, and the physical obstacles life presents for them, one cannot appreciate what is back of what the outsider calls shiftlessness. They are not the heavy, sturdy peasant type, which we are accustomed to see among our immigrants, who thrive on the hardest kind of labor. They are slight, delicately built, aristocratic Anglo-Saxons. Each year, from inbreeding and malnutrition, they are physically weaker; and because they know nothing about fertilizing, the land is less fruitful. Most of all, they need someone to teach them how to farm. I wish we could import a few Swiss to show them how to terrace the land. Every now and then I have to remind myself that they are living according to eighteenth-century standards, the heritage of two centuries having passed them by. All the sterling qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race are there awaiting development.
Here are some of my aristocrats. Yesterday, as I was going to Preaching, I met some strange women on the road, and stopped to talk.
‘Would it hinder ye to stop in to Litty Coburn’s and git the chaw of terbaccer I left with Litty’s gal, and fotch hit to my gal Dillie? ’ asked one of them. ‘She’s at the Preaching and, poor gal, she hain’t got nary a bit.’
I stopped at the next house. Litty’s gal, Bessie, gave me a wad wrapped in newspaper, which I carried to Meeting and delivered as instructed. Litty’s house has no windows, no chairs, no table, no stove. The furnishings consist of two beds, one safe (cupboard), one huge walnut chest. She and her three children cook their meals over a ramshackle fireplace, and, begrimed with smoke and ashes, sit on the floor to eat them.
If you had the toothache, up here, the Tooth-Jumper would take the tooth out, with one lick of his hammer on a nail, deftly adjusted at the base of the tooth. He is n’t any good unless he can do it with one lick. At least that is the old-time way of doing it, so they tell me.

SANDY RIDGE MISSION, August 2, 1918.
DEAR BOY,-
Poor Ellie is suffering a great deal. I’m afraid she can’t live much longer. I went over there last night about 9.30. It was a wild night, with the wind blowing a gale, pouring rain, and dark as pitch. Every house along the road was closed up tight. Only the flickering firelight through the little portholes of windows showed any signs of life. It was right spooky, stumbling over the stones, through the thick woods. The ha’nts were all out, especially around the Burying-ground.
When I arrived at the Troy Howards’, all were amazed that I had come alone, but poor Mr. Troy was delighted to see me. He has not slept, more than a couple of hours for weeks. I persuaded him to lie down and rest, promising to call him if Ellie were worse.
The house has two rooms. In the middle of the largest of these is Ellie’s bed, between two open doors. Back of it, in the two corners, are two other beds, the sleeping quarters for the seven other members of the family. After placing the three least uns in one bed and covering them tenderly with dirty remnants of quilts, and removing his coat, Troy Howard himself tumbled into the other bed, and in a few minutes was sleeping audibly.
Behind the head of Ellie’s four-poster bed sat Mrs. John Howard, an aunt, and myself, on two dilapidated, homemade chairs, the only chairs in the house; between us a small rickety table, on which was a can of insect-powder, a Bible without any cover, a rusty tin cup for Elbe to drink from, a bottle of patent cough-syrup, and a sort of kerosene torch, whose light, flickering in the wind, cast strange shadows on the wall. In the adjoining room, around the fireplace, — in which burned a sickly fire, — on the floor and on a long, narrow bench, sprawled the three older children and two neighbor young people, who had come for the novelty of the occasion. All expectorated freely on the floor and in the fire—a habit quite prevalent, whether chewing or not. A long table, covered with dirty dishes and crumbs from supper; a very small battered cookstove; a few shelves with a handful of dishes; and a barrel minus several staves, containing the family provisions of meal and flour, were the furnishings of the room. Under the floor occasionally squealed a pig or rabbit. To replenish the fire, I picked a stick off the floor. To my great dismay, I found that I had thrown into the fire one of the props that kept the floor from falling in. Unconcernedly, one of the boys ran out and brought in another stick to put in its place.
Ellie moaned. Sometimes she struggled for breath, as she tossed restlessly on her bed, calling for Poppy again and again. The only thing that quieted her was my cool fingers on her burning forehead. Mrs. John was much disturbed, but never went near Ellie or offered to help me raise her up to drink. The mountain people have an instinctive fear of sickness, especially tuberculosis.
Ellie’s hay-mattress had grown humpy. The bedding was indescribably dirty. She had on a black woolen shirt and calico waist over her underclothes, which she had worn in bed for two months at least.. I longed to freshen up her bed and make her clean and comfortable. She refused to change the clothes she had on, or to let anyone touch her bed, partly from pride and partly from not wanting to make work for anyone. Poor little Ellie! At sixteen she has already borne more than a woman’s load.
The children continued their hilarious time around the fire, quieting down only when I went in and suggested that they refrain from waking up their father. As it drew near midnight, it became more difficult for them to fight off sleep. Fat, sloppy Osie Kirby hung, half asleep, over one end of the bench, almost pinning skinny Columbus Rose to the wall. (I wish you could see him ride a kicking, plunging mule over fences, without a sign of saddle. Loose-jointed and impossible to kill, he can stick like a leech.) Savanny Howard was spread full length on the other end, while underneath the bench the two small Howard boys waked up betimes to pinch the girls’ legs and replenish the fire. Thus they continued until 1.30 A.M., when Savanny came in to reach down the lantern hanging over our heads, with which to light home the Amazon Osie. I have said that, the mountain girls are slight of stature and that they never go out at night. Osie is the necessary exception.
Their company gone, the young Howards prepared to retire also. Savanny took off her shoes and a shredded pair of white stockings, and crawled in with the little girls. The boys, having no shoes to remove, crawled in with their father just as they were. With a jerk at the ‘ kivers, ’ all were immediately asleep.
Mrs. John and I continued our watch. The fleas nearly devoured us alive. You may know they were ferocious when even Mrs. John was disturbed by them. My skirt and stockings were wet from the walk through the rain. So far I had been too much occupied to notice it. I shivered when I sat still. At times Mrs. John leaned her head on the table, and went off completely. I leaned my elbows on my knees, and my head in my hands, with all the heaviness of sleep, but kept awake. Meanwhile Ellie moaned in her sleep, Troy Howard snored, the rabbits ran in and out, chasing each other round the floor, hunting, for something to eat, and all the night noises went on out-of-doors. Sometimes Mrs. John sat looking intently at the Bible, although she cannot read. About every twenty minutes, she asked me the time.
‘Hit’s a long night when a body sets up,’ she reiterated several times. Mrs. John has a strange habit of looking fixedly at you, and mumbling along with you everything you say. If she can’t quite keep up with your speed, she at least repeats the last, few words of your sentences after you. It is as if she felt that you needed encouragement and her continuous approval. We grew chummiest when we repaired to the bench by the fire. Then she told me all the sickness she’d seen in her family, and I told her all about my family and where they lived. Before retiring, Troy Howard offered us the only food ready for eating in the house—some green apples off their run-out trees. Mrs. John ate several, and the children ate a great many, but no food had appeal for me under the circumstances.
After an endlessly long night the dawn gradually appeared, lighting up the rags and the dirt even more painfully than the torch and the firelight. Mrs. John set out for home, having been before. I stayed on, with nothing to do but replenish the fire and wait for Mr. Troy to wake up. At 6.30 he bestirred himself, looking like a different man after the first eight-hours’ sleep in weeks.
‘Jes’ stay,’ he urged, as I began putting on my cape; ‘ I ’ll rouseSavanny up to git ye some breakfast.’
He did n’t say, ‘Thank you.’ That expression is not used. However, he showed much gratitude and solicitude in asking as I said good-bye, ‘ Kin ye git some sleep when ye gits home?’ Troy Howard lives in a hovel, but he knows more about loving his children and the essential qualities of a home than the most successful man in the land.
The mist was everywhere as I walked the five long miles home. I was too weary and flea-bitten to care much about anything but physical refreshment. Miss W―greeted me with a cup of hot malted milk and some oatmeal crackers. Stopping only long enough to scrutinize each article of clothing as I took it off, and to demolish two fleas, I dropped into bed and slept for four hours, waking to devour a huge dinner.

August 5, 1918.
I began morning school last Monday, and I’m worn to a frazzle already. I have thirty children, ranging in age from five to thirteen, bright and feebleminded all together, in all stages of development. The children run as wild as little savages at home, and see no reason why they should n’t have t he same privilege here. They think nothing of yelling out in school. If I scold them, they run off and hide and don’t appear at school-time. The day before school began, I spent in deep consideration of the formidable mysteries of the ‘Course of Study for Virginia Rural Schools,’ hoping that a kind Providence would somehow see me through. I have divided them into three groups, but even at that, in my phonics class I have children from five to twelve years old. Fortunately I brought with me a lot of my kindergarten handwork materials, and some blessed wall-paper samples. When things get too thick, we construct chairs and tables out of wall-paper. At such times you can hear a pin drop, the children are so delighted with the paper and the idea of making something. The big boys have promised to make us a doll-house, so that all these beautiful rose-covered chairs can really function.
Little feeble-minded Gillard Coburn has learned what the letter A looks like. He cuts it out of paper and writes it on the board and the desks and the floor and the books. In fact, he is so delighted with A, he will have nothing to do with B, or any more of their family. Gillard is a great trial. If I let him be with the other children of his age, he feels badly when he can’t do as well as they. If I give him some handwork off by himself, his feelings are hurt because he can’t be with the others. With twenty-nine other little problems, I can’t devote the morning to him, poor child! He ought to be in a feeble-minded school, but his mother would never consent, being feebleminded also. She is Litty Coburn of the windowless, chairless, and stoveless house.
The first, day of school the children were here before we were up, they were so anxious for school to begin. Cornelis Marshall brought two of his children in to me. With the air of a millionaire father presenting his children at the most exclusive school in the country, he imperiously said, ‘I ’ve fotched my young uns an’ I wants ye to whup ’em an’ larn ’em.’
I like the quaint, indirect way people have of saying good-bye. Here is an example.
Josiah Howard, about to depart: ‘I reckon I better be a-goin’. ’
John, the host: ‘Don’t rush off.’
Josiah: ‘I’ll have to be gittin’ on.’
John: ‘Jes’ stay all night.’
Josiah: ‘Cain’t. Jes’ you uns come down with me.’
John: ‘Reckon we uns ’ll not go.’
This is n’t just once. The same kind of conversation goes on every time they part. Even if they just stop to talk a minute on the road, one politely starts the signal to move on by saying, ‘ Well, you-all go down with me.’
‘No, I cain’t. You jes’ go round with me,’ the other returns, moving on, too.
When I first came, I was very much amused at Jim Dyer, a man working for us. Every night before he went home, he would come to the door and say, ‘Well, you and Miss W― jes’ go down and stay all night.’
At first I did n’t know what kind of reply to make to Jim Dyer’s inviting two maiden ladies down to spend the night. I finally discovered that that was merely a polite way of bidding us good-bye. We, to have been equally polite, should have said, ‘No, we can’t go down, Jim. You stay with us.’

August 15, 1918.
Ellie Howard died on Wednesday. Miss W―went right out. As no one else undertook the job, she prepared Ellie’s body for burial, putting on a clean white nightgown that she took with her. The women were not satisfied with that, but sent one of the men off to Dante to buy new material for burying-clothes. Cornelis Marshall usually makes the coffins, and does it very neatly. Somebody foolishly persuaded Troy Howard to send off for a ‘ store ’ casket. This will cost twenty-five dollars at least, and there is hardly a bite to eat in the house; but poor Troy thinks that Ellie must have the best.
Thursday afternoon, when we arrived for the burying, the yard was swarming with people of all ages, standing around saying hardly a word. The buryingclothes had not arrived, nor had the men finished digging the grave. Finally a woman appeared with the clothes. We shooed out the children. While two girls held up a sheet over the doorway, we dressed Ellie in the finery that came from the store. It fell to my lot to put on the long silk gloves. Ellie never having owned a pair in her lifetime, the women thought she ought to have them when she was buried. I wanted to get up and shout that I would have nothing to do with decking out this empty shell of a body with emptier finery; but appreciating the loving spirit of the women, I picked up the gloves and, with much stretching and tugging, pulled them onto the stiff, cold hands. When she was all dressed, we put her in the black, shiny box, with fancy brass handles, which the women gazed on admiringly. It seemed to me I read scorn on Cornelis Marshall’s face, when he saw it.
Her few little treasured possessions (‘tricks,’ they call them) were put in with her — a red, heart-shaped box containing some old hair-ribbons and a tooth-brush, from the Mission, and her doll, from the Mission Christmas tree. The doll’s dress being dirty, a woman took it off and made a new one. The women were well satisfied with their labors, except for the fact that they had not been able to get any shoes. You see, they believe that at the Last Trump the graves will all be opened and people will come out of them as they went in. They did not like the idea of Ellie walking round in her stocking feet.
The preacher kneeled down in the yard and prayed and sang a hymn. Then the men carried the coffin up a steep hill, just a little way from the house, to the burying-ground, the women singing all the while. Where they got the breath, I’m sure I don’t know. It was all I could do just to climb. The preacher prayed long and loud, dwelling on the shortness of life and exhorting all to mend their ways and be saved, especially appealing to Troy Howard and his children. Poor Troy was so grief-stricken and worn out by staying up nights with Ellie, and working daytimes, that the words of the preacher wrought him up to a wild frenzy. The tears fairly gushed out as he swayed back and forth on the ground, calling out to God and to the preacher to have mercy on him. After it was over, Mr. Josiah took Troy and the six children home for the night, for Mrs. Josiah to mother.
A visit is a great occasion. The other day I was over at Mrs. Josiah’s. She was peeling apples to dry on the roof, when Emmet rushed in yelling, ‘Mammy, Mis’ Rose an Dillie, and Connie, an Orbin, an Troy are a-comin’ round the pint.’
‘Hain’t I the luckiest woman to have so much company come to my house!’ exclaimed Mrs. Josiah.
‘But it makes you such a heap of work,’ I remonstrated.
‘Law, hit’s a sorry woman as would n’t be proud to have company,’ she replied.
Mr. and Mrs. Josiah are fine. It’s a real joy to go over there. Many nights after supper I visit with them. It’s so homey and cosy to sit with all the eight children round the fireplace. They ask me about my homo and the strange, level country where I live; and I ask Mr. Josiah about what they did on the Ridge when he was a boy, and about his father and grandfather. Sometimes ‘Pap’ is there (Mrs. Josiah’s father). He tells us ghost stories that his father told him, until the children’s eyes fairly pop out of their heads. As the least uns fall asleep in somebody’s arms, they are dropped into the beds behind us, and the stories go on. It’s hard to break away from such a fireside.

September 21, 1918.
Cornelis Marshall’s boy, Richmond, told me the other night that since he was nine years old, he has always been drunk on Saturday night until the last two years. Even once in a while now Richmond does n’t appear fora few days, and we know he’s off again. It all began when his older brother started taking him along on his weekly carousals. For a time old Cornelis had a still of his own, where Richmond could get all he wanted. Then the ‘Revenues’ put a stop to that. After that, Cornelis and Richmond together went off to the nearest mining-camp for their weekly spree. Is it any wonder that nineteenyear-old Richmond has the brain of a boy of ten? The old Baptists have such a hold on Cornelis of late, that he no longer imbibes. Moreover, it is not so easy to get.
The mines are being opened up just half a mile from us. That means work and high wages for the men, but it also means the entrance of a demoralizing influence. You see, the mountaineers are living according to the standards of the eighteenth century. When the mines open up, they bring with them the degenerating side of twentiethcentury commercialism. We are trying to bring them the best influence of the civilization that has passed them by, but we and all the other social agencies at work are such a drop in the bucket! It’s a mighty big step from the eighteenth to the twentieth.
Up to this time they have had practically no money. When they begin working in the mines, they will get five dollars a week and up. The simple mountain boys lose their heads, their money, and their self-respect in the corrupting life of the camps. It all has to come because these mountains are rich in the coal and lumber that the world needs. Would that the schools might come first!

November 20, 1918.
A week ago Miss W―came down with the flu, so I ’ve been cook, nurse, water-carrier, fire-tender, and everything else combined. She had been nursing flu patients and was all tired out. The doctors are all so busy and so far away, she would n’t let me get one for her, because she knows so much about nursing herself.
Yesterday I had to go down to Dante for medicine. One of the Josiah Howard children came over to look after the fires and give Miss W― her meals. Coming back, I got started later than I expected, forgetting about the short days. Just as I struck the foot of the mountain, it began to rain and darkness enveloped me, so that I could not see any trace of the trail ahead. The bag full of medicine and grapefruit that I carried cut into my shoulder. My long heavy rain-cape weighted me down. I slipped and fell, being unable to catch myself. Every step forward, I took two back. The only way I had of knowing where I was, was by feeling with my feet. Finally I felt the familiar creek bed. Splashing through the water, wet up to my knees, stumbling over the stones, I followed it in the blackest darkness I have ever experienced. So long as I was in the creek, I could find my way; but the difficulty was to discover where the trail turned off the creek into the woods. Taking a wild chance, I climbed up the bank. The underbrush scratched my face, sharp sticks stuck into my legs. Stretching out my hand to save myself from falling, my full weight pressed a chestnut burr into my bare palm. Tears came to my eyes from the pain of it. Crashing and floundering through the trees, I lost all sense of direction. Absolute despair came over me. I knew that I was lost and that I ’d have to wait for morning to come. The wind made unearthly noises through the trees as I sat quietly on a stone to wait.
The idea of Miss W―sick in bed, waiting and worrying, started me searching for the lost trail again. In a second I stumbled onto it. I had been scrambling within a few feet of it all the time. Then followed a steep climb, but a sure trail, until I reached Mr. Josiah’s perpendicular cornfield. I wallowed round in the mud, until I became so faint and nauseated that I sat right down in the mud to rest. One of the bottles of medicine hit a rock and dripped over me. How I made the last pull to the top, I don’t know. It seemed to me I rested more than I climbed. The broken bottle contained the medicine I went after specially for Miss W―. However, she is enjoying the luxury of grapefruit so much that the trip was almost worth it.

DANTE, VIRGINIA, December 3, 1918.
The old flu got me too. I’m in bed down here at Deaconess’s. No one will give me credit for being very sick, because I am such an obstreperous patient, threatening to break up the furniture generally if they don’t comply with my wishes.
You see, Miss W―came down here to recuperate, leaving me alone up there. The Josiah Howards took the flu. I stayed up two nights with little Sabry, who has pneumonia. One morning I woke up with a temperature and cough and headache. I decided I ’d better get off the mountain while I could. I cleaned up the house, took the cat to Mrs. Lulars, and walked down to Dante. Deaconess gave me the luxury of a hot bath in a bath-tub, and put me to bed, and my head has been about to crack open ever since. I can’t take long getting well because the poor Josiah Howards are all down with it, except Mr. Josiah. He has to keep going whether he feels like it or not. I’ve got to get back to help them. The mountaineers don’t get work done ahead. They take out coal for a few days. Every Friday they take enough corn to mill to last until the next Friday. Water has to be carried from the spring for the stock and the house. When there’s only one to do everything, it’s almost an impossibility. The neighbors are all so afraid of the flu, they won’t go in to help. In the camps the people are dying in hundreds.

December 11, 1918.
It is 11.30 P. M. I am writing by the light of the Josiah Howards’ fire. Mrs. Josiah, Ornie, and Sabry have pneumonia. As they are resting pretty comfortably to-night, I have n’t much to do. Mr. Josiah is snoring loud enough to raise the roof. Poor man, he’s had his hands full with all of them sick. Miss W— and I take turns staying nights with them, since we came back from Dante. The pneumonia patients are still very sick, but the rest are all up and around. It ’s hard to take care of them because they wear all of their clothes to bed and are afraid to change them for fear of taking cold. I don’t believe there ’ll be any squeamishness left in me after this job on Sandy Ridge. The Josiah Howards are so appreciative of everything we do that it’s a joy to take care of them, no matter how much our olfactories may be offended.

December 27, 1918.
Christmas has been a day for the women to look forward to with fear and trembling. For their lords and masters, ‘takin’ Christmas’ means drinking and shooting. Our friends have predicted dire happenings at our Christmas trees, but so far nothing unpleasant has occurred. To-day there were several men here whose joviality left no doubt as to what rested in their back hip-pockets. The very sight of the revenue officer almost started a fight out in the yard. The appearance of such a personage, to the mountaineer, is like waving a red flag before a bull. However, it soon quieted down and there was no more disturbance. The only Christmas casualty I heard of was a boy shooting his mother in the leg in a drunken fit of rage.
After the tree we all walked down to Dante, to have dinner and stay all night with Deaconess. It was just cold enough to make you want to breathe from your boots up. The snow began to fall in the morning. By the time we went through the woods, the laurel and ivy were weighted down with a feathery white covering. We tramped on a soft carpet, which now and then gave way and sent, us sprawling most unceremoniously.
We stopped to say ‘Howdy’ to Noah Howard in passing.
‘My folks is all down with the influenzy, and Mirie ’s had turrible fevers on her, so’s I hain’t had a chanct to strip fer three weeks,’ announced Noah.
He is another of the great unwashed. Stripping means taking off dirty clothes and putting on clean ones, bathing being an unknown institution in these parts. How can they bathe, with one wash-basin, a large family living in one room, and water to be carried from the spring, maybe a block away? Some of these nights, when I stand almost in the fireplace, with the wash-basin on a chair, the wind blowing through the cracks, and my breath visible in every direction, I wish that I might dispense with the ordeal.

January 25, 1919.
Iva, Josiah’s oldest girl, wants to get married. Patton Edwards has been ‘talkin’ to her’ for some time. Last Sunday he sent Iva’s uncle, Paris Kirby, to put his case before Josiah. Mr. and Mrs. Josiah have no objection to Patton, but as Iva is only sixteen, they think she ought to wait. Mrs. Josiah was just sixteen when she was married, so her words don’t bear much weight. I think the wedding will be very soon.

March 1, 1919.
I went to two weddings the other day, one at Josiah’s and the other at Cornelis Marshall’s. The Howards had been making preparations for a week. First they scrubbed every board and piece of furniture in the house and washed every article of clothing; then, with the help of their kinswomen, set in to make cakes and pies. When Mrs. Josiah came over to invite us, we asked what time the wedding would take place.
‘ Whenever we kin git the dinner up, ’ she replied.
As I learned later, the dinner was the pièce de résistance of the day.
At nine o’clock in the morning people began to arrive, on foot and on horseback. At ten, Ornie and Nancy came after all our dishes. At eleventhirty, we went over. The women had a table outdoors, rolling out dozens of biscuits. The old men stood around, talking and swapping; the young ones cut all kinds of shines with the horses and mules. Columbus Rose had a large audience watching him put life into cadaverous old mules you would think had lost the power to move. The children yipped and yelled and set the dogs to fighting, having the wild kind of time they like. The biscuits being all rolled out, the women made the dumplings, and dropped them in leisurely fashion into a boiler, in which two chickens were cooking over an open fire.
At length the dinner was done got up, and the bride changed her dress. There were two rooms (houses, they call them) to this home. This space would not hold the bountifully spread table and the hundred people present, so the ceremony was performed in the backyard. When the women announced that dinner was ready, the boys and girls, jeering and laughing, dragged the blushing bride and groom into the yard. The old Baptist preacher, in a brown mackinaw, took his place in front of the bride and groom. The ‘waiters’ (attendants), two boys and two girls, were shoved into their places on either side of the bride and groom. The preacher tied the knot in very short order, saying only a few of the sentences of our prayer-book service. The words were hardly out of his mouth when an uproar began, everyone hollering and yelling at the top of their lungs. There was hardly any more solemnity to this ceremony than to the primitive marriage custom of jumping over the broomstick.
The bride, groom, waiters, and preacher sat down at the first table. I was supposed to have had a seat with them, but there was one seat missing, so I stepped out. As I was not so aggressive as some of the rest, it was the fourth table before I got my turn at the dinner. While it was being served, the children swarmed round, on our feet and under our feet. To keep them quiet, their mothers gave them handouts of pie, cake, and biscuits, and they helped themselves out of the dumplingpot. Gravy and pie running down their fronts, they squeezed in amongst us.
The chicken had given out long before the fourth table, but there remained dumplings, baked ham, potatoes, pickled beets, pickled beans with ham, rice, biscuits, coffee stronger than moonshine, three kinds of canned fruit, cocoanut and chocolate cake, and driedapple pie.
The man on my right had served eight years in the penitentiary for killing three Italians. He went into their saloon down in one of the camps. Because these men did not do some trivial thing he wanted, he pulled his gun and shot five, killing three of them. When the constable got there, he was laying them out. The court gave him fifteen years, but he got out in eight for good behavior.
It took so long for me to get my dinner at the Howards’, that by the time I got to the Marshall cabin, Richmond and his bride were done married. Mrs. Marshall insisted that I sit right down and eat. Cornelis Marshall in his greasy sweater, which had n’t been off his back, day or night, all winter, and the dirty, dingy old lean-to of a kitchen, where the wedding supper was spread, did not stimulate my appetite, as I was already too full for utterance; but Mrs. Marshall’s hospitality was so sincere that I forced down some more beans and cake, for fear of hurting her feelings.
Richmond, the ne’er-do-well, — age nineteen, — married a woman of thirty-five, with four children, the eldest fourteen years old. Richmond is out of work. Neither of them has a cent, or an article of furniture to start housekeeping with; but that does not seem to worry them. For the last five years the bride has been living with those of her relatives whose dispositions could stand the strain.
The wedding in this case was even less of a ceremony than the other. The bride laughed all the time that the same brown-mackinawed preacher was talking. When the ceremony was over, she announced that she expected to be married two more times before she died. A little later, when I arrived, the bride and groom were both chewing tobacco, as the corners of their mouths evidenced, and the groom’s sister had her lower lip full of snuff. Poor Mrs. Marshall is heartbroken over this wedding. Iva’s is the more typical mountain wedding.
According to custom, Iva and Patton spent the first, night at her home. The next morning, on horseback, the newly married couple, followed by family and friends, led the procession to the groom’s house eight miles round the Ridge. There they were to have another big spread, called the ‘Infare.’ In the procession were two wagons; in one of these was Maggie Rose, an aunt of the bride. Just at the top of the hill, in sight of the house, she got out of the wagon. Uncovering the baby she held in her arms, she found it was dead. The children were sent to the house, where the dinner had begun, for fresh horses. They got to playing and forgot what they were sent for. The father, becoming impatient, grabbed the dead baby and set out for home, the mother, carrying a larger child, vainly trying to keep up with his frenzied strides. They did not stop until they came to their home six miles down the mountain. Seemingly the only effect on the Infare was that it broke up unusually early, so that the men could get off to dig the grave.