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not shout and gesticulate he might be termed a good speaker but not a good 
preacher, The early attitude towards the settlement workers was indi- 
cated in a mountain sermon in which the congregation was told to “beware 
of the fetched on women who come in here wearing gold watches, and 
their shirt fronts starched so slick that a fly would slip off and bust out his 
brains”. But, a year later, the same mountaineer said that since these 
women were administering to the needy under conditions so harsh that 
even the mountain people would not venture out, “I allow as how they are 
welcome to stay in the mountains as long as I live.” One mountain 
patriarch, who has given his farm and essentially his all in founding a set- 
tlement school in the valley of his home, gives some of his reasons as fol- 
lows: That there was much whiskey and wickedness in the community 
where his grandchildren must be reared, was a serious thing for him to 
study about. He heard two of his neighbors say that there is neither 
heaven nor hell. One of them said that when a man is dead he is just the 
sime as a dumb beast. Another said that he could not rear his large fam- 
ily of children to be as mean as he wished. The founder's idea was that a 
good school ‘‘would help moralize the country.’ Formerly the Presbyterian 
religion was most prevalent, but it gave way to the ‘‘Hardshell’ Baptist 
creed, since in the mountains the educational qualifications for the latter 
were less severe than for the former. The disciples of this religion have in 
turn given way before the ‘Missionary Baptists.’ Methodists are also 
numerous. The most vivid disputes in the mountains were wont to be 
about religion. But now there is a significant change toward toleration in 
that preachers frequently exchange pulpits with pastors of other denomi- 
nations, and that the use of a church is often tendered to another denomi- 
nation which temporarily is without a place of worship. The following 
‘an be interpreted as a groan of growth: “The church in eour holler, hits 
about dade. Part ov the folks wants an eddicated preacher, an parts wants 
an old-timer, an so they don’t get nary one’. The funeral preaching had 
become the sole opportunity for social gathering until the recent advent of 
“camp meeting week’, and the coming of the extension school on wheels. 
Changing conditions have not yet affected greatly the political situa- 
tion in the mountains. Since the Civil War so many of the inhabitants 
have been Republicans that party arguments have been one-sided, and 
the contests have been within the organization. Unity of feeling gives the 
representatives considerable power in the State Legislature. Political 
discussions are said to be confined in general to stump speeches con- 
