how the " Yanks" put spurs to their horses and how the 

 "Johnnies" started for safer quarters. How they came 

 flying past the Grecian cohimns of the great hotel with 

 the "Yanks" close after them. How they plunged 

 through "Dry Creek," "up hill and down dale," right 

 over the Allegheny Mountains to Old Sweet Springs, a 

 ride of about twenty miles, before the pursuit and flight 

 was over. But the Major and his conunand were safe ; 

 not a man was lost. 



The Major's tales are always full of powder. 



Eleven miles from here is Lewisburg, \V. A'a., the 

 county town of Greenbriar county. To reach it a high 

 mountain has to be overcome, or overgone, on the higher 

 points of which is a stretch of utterly worthless land. 

 The soil, what little there is, is red, stony and incapable 

 of producing anything better than an occasional thistle or 

 a stunted, sickly little pine shrub. An old time stage 

 coach was one hot day toiling slowly and painfully up 

 the long hill, filled with passengers who were making 

 merry over the "pore land," one man venturing the 

 remark "that the man who owned that land must be a 



d d fool." Thereupon a long, lanky. West \'irginian 



rose up and confronted the speaker in an angry and defiant 

 manner and asserted "that he owned that land, but he 



wasn't such a d d fool as they took him for, as he 



onlj^ owned half on it." 



Coming down from a horseback ride on Kate Moun- 

 tain, one of West Virginia's giant hills, my young son 

 said to me, "Ain't these West Virginia mountaineers 

 quaint people?" I readily answered that they were. I 

 have never seen their quaintness and a few of their other 



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