THE EARLY SETTLERS 145 
cious of new-fangled notions, and very suspicious of 
any attempt to "improve" him or his community, 
believing that what was good enough for his father 
was good enough for him, he stood like a bulwark 
against the advance of new ideas, and particularly 
against the intrusion of the rich and " bigotty " new- 
comer, who he imagined looked down on him and 
his simple ways. Hospitable to a fault among his 
own, and to the stranger whom he trusted, but resort- 
ing at need to more than questionable methods of 
freeing himself from the presence of an obnoxious 
neighbor, the Southern mountaineer was an enigma 
to the well-meaning but impolitic stranger, who, 
seeking to make for himself a beautiful home in the 
Southern mountains, was perhaps forced to leave 
the country before the exactions and the implacable 
hostlHty of the native people. If you are friends with 
the people, all is well, but if you are a mere customer 
of their commodities or their labor, then you must 
match not only your wits against theirs, but your 
ignorance against their knowledge of the moun- 
tains, with the odds seldom in your favor. 
The mountain people are many of them poor and 
ignorant, but the ill-clad man, who to the city vis- 
itor may look like a vagabond, is not to be treated 
as such; he knows some things the fine-appearing 
stranger does not know, and is well aware of the fact. 
The mountaineer is very old-fashioned, so old- 
fashioned that he values native shrewdness above 
what he calls "book-larnin"'; so old-fashioned that 
he thinks his neighbors as good as himself, and him- 
