14 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
which blessings she is duly grateful. "Now I can 
put my bread and cheese upon the shelf and nothing 
can blow cold upon me unless I let it, ha! ha!" she 
exclaims triumphantly when congratulating herself 
upon having weathered the perilous seas of matri- 
mony. Aunt Eliza is a strong woman and works 
hard when she has to. When the bread and cheese 
get low, she goes to chopping down the pine trees on 
her piece of land. She converts them into firewood 
and hauls them to town on a home-made sled drawn 
by a very reluctant bull calf, whose neck she has 
subjected to the yoke despite his manifest disap- 
proval. It used to be one of the diversions of Traum- 
fest to see Aunt Eliza "wrastling" with her calf on 
the way to town, she at one end of the rope braced 
and inclined like a leaning tower, the calf at the 
other end, braced and rigid, leaning in the opposite 
direction. In her garden she raises, so she tells you, 
"oodles of gubers and taters," which translated 
means a great many peanuts and potatoes. Let not 
this appearance of energy, however, deceive or alarm 
any one, for Aunt Eliza manages to make her way 
without seriously disturbing the waters of Idleness. 
Some time since. Aunt Eliza got religion. She 
began going to church and profiting according to 
her light on the "preachment" and "taughtment" 
of the scriptures as there expounded, though her 
piety is intermittent, according to the long-suffering 
"preacher," who shakes his venerable head over her 
state as he remarks with a sigh, " Eliza is a mighty 
peace-breakin ' woman . ' ' 
