68 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



first lick, he rolled over on his back and slept 

 again, taking the post with him, holding it 

 clasped in his arms. He was right good at 

 that. 



I had other help from time to time some of 

 the "hill billies." There were lots of them liv- 

 ing around us then, in little huts cuddled down 

 in sheltering nooks on the hillsides. Do you 

 remember Charles Egbert Craddock's stories 

 of the Tennessee mountaineers? They might 

 have been written of our people. We got 

 along with ours first rate, on the whole, though 

 we looked at the shield always from opposite 

 sides. My definition of Work wasn't in their 

 dictionary at all. Their notion of a day's work 

 consisted in leaning on an ax handle and con- 

 versing, or squatting on a fallen log and con- 

 versing, or settling their shoulders comfortably 

 against a tree trunk and conversing. If I came 

 within talking distance of one of them in the 

 clearing, I had a conversation on my hands 

 forthwith. They couldn't make us out at all 

 couldn't understand what folly we were up to. 

 Those of them who linger in the country to-day 

 there are only a scattering few of them left 

 ? can't understand what we've been driving at 

 all these years, even with the visible signs be- 



