Old Penny's Dead ! 



OLD PENNY'S dead! Gone, at last, the 

 youngest of those rare old men who taught me 

 in my youth : unlettered philosophers who drew 

 me nearer than the learned folk of later years. 

 About the backwoods now degeneracy is painfully 

 marked. Ignorance is still everywhere, but now 

 without the brains to make it respectable. In the 

 days of Uz Gaunt and Miles Overfield it was well 

 worth the while to listen to those to whom life- 

 long contact with Nature had not been without 

 results. Of late, the power of observing seems to 

 have left the backwoodsman, or the present poor 

 apology for such. Old Fenny was the last of his 

 race. There is no one now living who will ever 

 approach him, though he lives to pass the century 

 year-post. Perhaps the change in the country 



r 22* 257 



