i84 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
always, and they Insist upon your spending the day 
with them. Truth to tell, one enjoys a sense of 
very genuine welcome where the eyes of the hostess 
look into those of the unexpected guest, undimmed 
by a thought of what she is to have for dinner. It is 
no doubt the extreme simplicity of the food, and the 
fact that everybody, rich and poor alike, have the 
same, that give the people their gracious gift of hos- 
pitality and their feeling of equality. The knowledge 
that everybody serves the same dinner in the same 
way must go far towards leveling social distinctions. 
As you go about the mountains, you will come to 
many an old-time log house, the pictorial survivor 
of an age when the log house was the only house 
built. Those of better class, made of hewn logs and 
built by the "quality" of former generations, are 
large and substantial with a stone chimney at either 
end, from the depths of whose vast fireplaces one 
can still in imagination smell the banquets prepared 
in the "ovens" that stood in the ashes, and In the 
pots that hung suspended from the wrought-Iron 
cranes. 
Oftener than the large log house, you come upon 
the smaller one of only two or three rooms, or the 
cabin of but a single room, yet each and every one 
has its big stone chimney, and most of them have 
the porch wreathed in vines, while one yet sees roofs 
covered with hand-made shingles. The outside 
chimney standing against one end of the house gives 
the finishing touch to the appearance of the log cabin, 
but its picturesqueness is its chief virtue. The flames 
