The Piney Woods [pp. 361-369]

THE PINEY WOODS.
increasing population makes this kind of sport dangerous, lie
heaves a sigh of uitter despair, and consoles himself with the
thought that "'the pine-knots done gill eout, an' hits time to
move." Hle shoulders his rifle, crams his family in an ox-cart,
and seeks a settlement in a denser wilderness. If his sons are
inclined to be industrious and dutiful in maintaining their
"sickly old fathers" in their age, they spend the rest of their
days in smoking a pipe at the cabin door, and, like Rip
Van Winkle, playing with or nursing the grandchildren. By
this time, high wages being paid for industry, his sons are
engaged as artizans. The borders of the old honre-fields, having
grown up in oaks, magnolias, sassafras, maples and dogwood,
foirm a lawn ready made and planted, to the hand of the landseape gardener. A town gentleman becomes the purchaser;
the potato patch becomes a miniature park; a cottage is built,
and the former proprietor looks with envy and wonder on the
possessor of the old homestead. But the proceeds realized
from its sale sets him up in the world, and his children ming,le
with the advancing tide of population as important free-holders.
This is a true sketch of the lowest caste of Southern population,
and even here you do not find absolute pauperism. This class
exists in every land, and is only a little worse in the ultra
South because of the softness of the climate and thickness of
the pines.
A solitude of unsettled forest rapidly barbarises. Even the
educated and refined, placed in the same circumstances, become
gluttonous and careless of dress, and give up to coarse and
slothful mnanners. Thley grow indolent, because there is nothings
to call forth exertion. They become shlabby in toilet, because
the eye of pride and fashion is not on them; and over-indulgence in food is natural, whlere the diiiing-hlour is the principal
event of the day. The neglect of ceremony brings grossness of
behavior, and too much familiarity degenerates into contempt.
Unconsciously, our breeding and self-control vanishes and
mnemory loses the treasures of knowledge. D)r. Kane, in his
"arctic expeditionii," preserved himself and followers from these
evil effects, by enforcingl, the rules of good breeding with
almost as firm a hand as those of ship discipline. His quick
and philosophical mind immediately saw its importance. It is
the constant collision of mind in party or intellectual strifes,
the rivalries in trade and tile emulations in fashion, the
restraints of ceremony and the excitement of vanity, pride and
ambition, that keep the constant polish on civilization and prevent man's relapse into barbarism. "Poor white trash" will
always be found, in every country and every age, as long as
men are idle and indiscreet, or imbecile and shut in by woods;
and those who attribute these evils to an institution, should
have attributed them to human nature. They are not indolent
because they consider labor the business of a slave, but because
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