14 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



which he says he is prouder than any other 

 of his life's assets. He is not a rich man 

 as riches go today, as money for its own 

 sake has never appealed to him. A dollar 

 means to Earl Palmer a dollar's worth of 

 pleasure for his wife and boys, a dollar's 



help to a friend or a dollar flung with gen- 

 erous hand into the lap of poverty. He is 

 broad-minded in his social instincts, fond 

 of fun, an enthusiastic Hoo-Hoo, and like 

 al] men of his nervous, aggressive temper- 

 ament, a tremendous worker. 



Strode's Stuff. 



A Chapter on Etiquette. 



A thing which has vexed and perplexed me 

 not a little is the matter of etiquette. Since 

 I bought a book on the 10-cent counter of a 

 second-hand store in St. Louis I find that 

 nearly everything I have done in the past 

 twenty yeai-s has been wrong. 



There is something about a second-hand 

 store that is sadly interesting. The whole 

 place speaks of poverty of the genteel va- 

 riety; the poverty of the trimmed cuffs and 

 collars; the poverty that drives a man to sell 

 life Lnsuranee and newspaper advertising, 

 and finally drives him to commit suicide or 

 go to work. It makes me feel mighty bad- 

 ly I tell you. 



When a person gets so poor that he must 

 sell his books, it is sad indeed, for books 

 are man 's best friends, and he must be 

 desperately hard up who lets them go. Yet 

 it might happen to any of us. To see a 

 man of intelligence forced with his back to 

 the wall, gradually sinking lower and lower, 

 totally unfit to cope with the world and sep- 

 arate it from enough money to live on, with- 

 out recourse to that last dread alternative of 

 laying aside his collar and dickey and going 

 to work, makes my heart bleed. 



The volume I found in the second-hand 

 book store had evidently belonged to a 

 woman. Who else could have been interested 

 in "Ladies' Handbook of Etiquette and 

 Fashion"? The date of the publication was 

 1860, and the author was Miss Louise Hark- 

 ness. On a torn fly leaf is written the name 

 of Mrs. Clotilda Smith. Poor woman! She 

 had to part with her book. I wonder why? 

 Somehow I imagine she kept a boarding- 

 house and had this book on the center table. 

 I have seen such books on center tables of 

 boarding-houses. Maybe the star boarder 

 ran away and did not pay his bill, and may- 

 be the poor woman had to sacrifice some of 

 her books to meet her butcher's account. 

 Who knows? Her loss was my gain, for 1 

 could see by just glancing through the book 

 that many things I had done were bad form. 

 I became interested, and the next day be- 

 ing Sunday I became absorbed in it, nor 

 did I rest until I had read it through en 

 tirely. 



Now, I was very strictly brought up; my 

 TTncle John was looked on as an authority 

 on everything pertaining to manners, and 

 he wag a great stickler for form. He was 

 the only violin player for miles aroutid. He 

 played for all the balls and parties, and 

 what he said went throughout all that sec- 

 tion of Indiana. 



I remember one thing, a small thing it 

 was, but it showed my uncle's power. The 

 i:niversal custom prevailed of blowing in the 

 end of the pepper box to make it give down 

 freely, but Uncle John set his face against 

 it, said it wouldn't do at all. He just 

 hooted at it, and he succeeded in stamping 

 it out, so that the practice died in all that 

 section of Indiana, and a great forward step 

 was taken toward culture. Now this woman 

 didn't say a word about it, although ten 

 years after the book was written the question 

 of blowing in the end of the pepper box 

 was a living, vital issue throughout all of 

 Indiana and portions of Illinois. I looked 

 carefully all through her chapter on table 

 manners and saw no reference to the ques- 

 tion. If you can't make the pepper box 

 give down any other way, are you doing right 

 by blowing in the end of it? Uncle John said 

 no, and I stand by Uncle John. 



Another thing which caused a good deal 

 of excitement in the early '70 's was the 

 question of how often a woman might go 

 barefoot. This subject Miss Harkness doesn't 

 touch on at aU in her book. Uncle John 

 took a very liberal position in the matter, 

 and I would like some authority quoting 

 he was right. The extremist contended that 

 a woman should wear shoes all the time, 

 but Uncle John, realizing the kind of people 

 with whom he had to deal, and knowing how 

 earnestly they were striving for a higher 

 life, was easier on them. A woman might 

 go barefooted when in and about the house, 

 and take her comfort in doing her work, 

 but no woman should appear in the country 

 town or at church without shoes. If you 

 met one on the road and she was carrying 

 her shoes and stockings in her hand it was 

 all right. Her shoes might be new and un- 

 broken or her feet spread unduly from be- 

 ing so long unconfined, but once she had 

 come in sight of the town or church, she 

 must sit down and put on her shoes and 

 stockings. My uncle was firm on this point 

 — inexorable, you might say. 



I remember how strict he was with me; I 

 could no more go barefooted after the first 

 snow had fallen than I could fly. Of course 

 a little skiff of snow falling early in the 

 season or a heavy frost did not count; but . 

 onco winter had set in shoes had to come. 



Miss Harkness in her chapter on the ' ' Et- 

 iquette of Balls and Parties" leaves severely 

 alone several burning questions. One is the 

 question as to whether a young man is jus- 

 tified in cutting a pigeon wing or doing a 

 breakdown at the call of "balance all." 



Uncle John permitted it, and in truth you 

 take a 200-pound young Hoosier with his 

 boots freshly oiled, his mustache freshly 

 blackened and a silk handkerchief knotted 

 around his brawny throat, and if he wishes 

 to do a double shuflJe, I'd like to know who 

 is going to stop him. 



I would not have you think, however, that 

 Uncle John did not know where to stop. 

 He was not an easy mark. Some young 

 bucks made it a practice to swing their part- 

 ners clear off the floor at the wind-up of 

 the dance, and playfully carry them around 

 the room to their seats. My Uncle John did 

 not like this and I have seen him descend 

 from his perch on the kitchen table and stop 

 the biggest of them. Oh, he had nerve all 

 right, and, besides, they knew if they didn 't 

 walk straight he would pick up his fiddle, 

 go home, and break up the dance. 



Another thing that Miss Harkness doesn't 

 mention is the etiquette which should pre- 

 vail when the preacher calls. That subject 

 is entitled to a chapter in itself, for when 

 the preacher called in those days, it required 

 a different kind of etiquette and much more 

 of it than at any other time. The preachers 

 were mostly circuit riders and whenever our 

 preacher, who was what was known as a 

 shouting Methodist who had been "called" 

 to preach, came around, we put on all the 

 stjde we knew how, and some we were not 

 altogether certain about. He was a 225- 

 pound man, with iron gray whiskers under 

 his chin and his upper lip and around his 

 mouth clean shaven. Thus there was nothing 

 in the way of his eating, and, Lord, how 

 he could eat! Uncle John always made it 

 a rule to have fresh meat when he came. 

 ' ' Chicken if we can, rabbit if we must, ' ' 

 was his motto. I remember once he thought 

 he had a chicken all corralled for the preach- 

 er, and he invited him to dinner, but a 

 mink crawled into the smoke house unbe- 

 known to Uncle John and exterminated that 

 chicken root and branch. In vain my Uncle 

 John explained the situation to the preacher, 

 took him .out and showed him the hole where 

 the mink had crawled in, and the bones and 

 feathers of the chicken lying about. In 

 vain my Aunt Mary, who was a Kentucky 

 bred woman, got a good dinner of white 

 biscuit made out of flour, and hot fried 

 pork. The preacher was disappointed and 

 showed it, and Uncle John was nearly heart- 

 broken. CHAitLES D. Strode. 



Change in Asheville. 



The name of the McEwen-Gibson Lumber Com- 

 pany of Asheville. N. C. has been changed to 

 the McEwen Lumber Company, by reason of the 

 sale of the interest and holdings of P. S. Gib- 

 son to other members of the company. 



The capital stock of the reorganized copora- 

 tlon has been Increased and the company an- 

 nounces that It Is prepared to meet trade re- 

 quirements' with the same care and attention 

 that it has In the past. The directors of the 

 MoEwen Lumber Company consist of W. S. 

 McEwen, president ; H. Meader. vice-president, 

 and F. R. Moale. Its main yard Is located at 

 Azalea, N. C. 



