That is, thirty cents for each individual, or ten cents
for each meal and lodging.
Our road was a sort of by-way up Gentry Creek and over the Cut Laurel
Gap to Worth's, at Creston Post Office, in North Carolina, - the next
available halting place, said to be fifteen miles distant, and
turning out to be twenty-two, and a rough road. There is a little
settlement about Egger's, and the first half mile of our way we had
the company of the schoolmistress, a modest, pleasant-spoken girl.
Neither she nor any other people we encountered had any dialect or
local peculiarity of speech. Indeed, those we encountered that
morning had nothing in manner or accent to distinguish them. The
novelists had led us to expect something different; and the modest
and pretty young lady with frank and open blue eyes, who wore gloves
and used the common English speech, had never figured in the fiction
of the region. Cherished illusions vanish often on near approach.
The day gave no peculiarity of speech to note, except the occasional
use of "hit" for "it."
The road over Cut Laurel Gap was very steep and stony, the
thermometer mounted up to 80 deg., and, notwithstanding the beauty of
the way, the ride became tedious before we reached the summit. On
the summit is the dwelling and distillery of a colonel famous in
these parts. We stopped at the house for a glass of milk; the
colonel was absent, and while the woman in charge went after it, we
sat on the veranda and conversed with a young lady, tall, gent, well
favored, and communicative, who leaned in the doorway.
"Yes, this house stands on the line. Where you sit, you are in
Tennessee; I'm in North Carolina."
"Do you live here?"
"Law, no; I'm just staying a little while at the colonel's. I live
over the mountain here, three miles from Taylorsville. I thought I'd
be where I could step into North Carolina easy."
"How's that?"
"Well, they wanted me to go before the grand jury and testify about
some pistol-shooting down by our house, some friends of mine got into
a little difficulty, - and I did n't want to. I never has no
difficulty with nobody, never says nothing about nobody, has nothing
against nobody, and I reckon nobody has nothing against me."
"Did you come alone?"
"Why, of course. I come across the mountain by a path through the
woods. That's nothing."
A discreet, pleasant, pretty girl. This surely must be the Esmeralda
who lives in these mountains, and adorns low life by her virgin
purity and sentiment. As she talked on, she turned from time to time
to the fireplace behind her, and discharged a dark fluid from her
pretty lips, with accuracy of aim, and with a nonchalance that was
not assumed, but belongs to our free-born American girls.
