A STRENUOUS HOLIDAY 



behind our Northern and more scientific farming 

 the South still is, are the groups of small haystacks 

 in the meadows with poles sticking out of their 

 tops, letting the rain and the destructive bacteria 

 into their hearts. Among the old-fashioned fea- 

 tures of the South much to be commended are 

 the large families. In a farmhouse near which we 

 made camp one night there were thirteen children, 

 the eldest of whom was at the front in France. 

 The schools were in session in late August, and the 

 schoolrooms were well filled with pupils. 



No doubt there are many peculiar local customs 

 of which the hurrying tourist gets no inkling. At 

 a station in the mountains of North Carolina a 

 youngish, well-clad countryman, smoking his pipe, 

 stood within a few feet of my friend and me and 

 gazed at us with the simple, blank curiosity of a 

 child. There was not the slightest gleam of intelli- 

 gent interest, or self -consciousness in his face; it 

 was the frank stare of a five-year-old boy. He 

 belongs to a type one often sees in the mountain 

 districts of the South — good human stuff, valiant 

 as soldiers, and industrious as farmers, but so 

 unacquainted with the great outside world, their 

 unsophistication is shocking to see. 



It often seemed to me that we were a luxuriously 

 equipped expedition going forth to seek discomfort, 

 for discomfort in several forms — dust, rough roads, 

 heat, cold, irregular hours, accidents — is pretty 



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