204 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
evils. His possession consisted perhaps of a large 
family and a small cornfield, the latter often on a 
mountain slope so steep that its staying there seemed 
little short of miraculous. His corn being his wealth, 
it had to buy the clothes of the family if they had 
any. He could with great labor "tote" it down the 
mountain many miles to the nearest market, get 
next to nothing for it, go home to his needy family, an 
"honest man" in the eyes of the law, but despised 
by his neighbors as being "no account" in the war- 
fare of life. Or he could betake himself to some lonely 
gorge not far from home, "still up" his grain, easily 
transport the product and yet more easily dispose of 
it. There is always a market for corn in this form, 
and the price it brings is several hundred fold that 
of the raw material, and the man who "stilled," 
though a reprobate in the eye of the law, until very 
recently was not so in the estimation of his neigh- 
bors. His family was fed and clothed, he waxed rich, 
and the stranger who came to the mountains admired 
his picturesque home and praised him for his indus- 
try, unaware of the true nature of his labors. It 
must have been a nice matter for any judge, taking 
into consideration all the circumstances, to decide 
whether the moonshiner of yesterday, when no 
avenues to livelihood were open, was a "good" man 
or a "bad" one. The unsuccessful moonshiner, of 
course, was bad. 
Within the past few years the moonshiner, along 
with many time-honored customs, has been rapidly 
vanishing. But before that one often met him in the 
