as to schools and Sunday-schools, there was a lull in the conversation, when she spoke up:  “I hain’t got no sweetheart.”  For all marriage is the chief aim, it is surprising how little preparation they make for it.  No bridal trousseau is ever thought of; not even a new dress is made for the occasion.  I have seen many a bride in calf-skin shoes, old calico dress, long apron, with no cuffs nor collar, and her hair falling from her comb, while the groom appeared with uncombed hair, stogy shoes, jean pants and in shirt sleeves.

We have no rollicking girls or boisterous boys; we never see a crowing, cooing baby.  The children are born old.  The babies have a sad and dejected look, as if this world were a “dreary wilderness of woe,” and they grieve they were ever born.  Poor little ones in the Southland! how many are gathered home ere a twelve months’ stay on earth.  Besides this weary, aged look of the children, we frequently find those who look like walking corpses.  A little inquiry reveals the fact that they are clay eaters.  We have them in our schools.  In our Jellico school, we have children whose elder sisters had to sprinkle pepper around the hearthstones to keep them from digging out the clay and eating it.  The habit once formed, it seems to last them during life; where it ever originated I don’t know, but have no doubt it was from lack of proper nourishment.

Our women! how shall I describe them?  I wish I might picture them before you as they ride into town with their babies in their arms and a child or two on their horses with them, or as they walk in with heavy, dragging gait, loaded with some produce for sale, or as they stand for hours open-eyed and open-mouthed around the counters of some country store.  I wish you could see them in their cabin homes, as bare of comfort as a wild desert waste, or at work in the field with the family, but always and everywhere with a chew of tobacco or a snuff stick in their mouths.  They never express a desire for what they have not, nor a murmur at what they have, but their very movements are a complaint—­a wail.  On their face is ever seen that weary, resigned, passionless look.  They never lighten with joy or surprise.  If you could manage to fire a Vesuvius before their eyes you would never know by any outward expression but that they had seen volcanoes every day of their lives.  There is no imagery, no ideality.  The world to them is a humdrum routine, a common-place affair.  They have no heroes, and they look upon all men, not as protectors, but seducers, not as beings formed in the image of a pure and holy God, but in the image of a God of lust and debauchery.

When first going among these people, the ludicrous or comical keeps presenting itself, but as you stay year by year the terrible reality of their lives presses sore upon you.  You are cramped by their narrowness; you are depressed by their lack of buoyancy; you grow distrustful because of their perfidy; you become sharer of their woes, but they have no joys to share.