Highland annals

Granpap accrued to me along with a farm in the Unakas. When I learned that my inheritance lay, or rather rose, in the Unakas, it at once passed from prose to poetry. My hundred...

I started on, thinking of all the Cyns and Bens I had known; and of a gay friend, now fallen, who liked to assure me that “A heart is known by the autopsy.” My foot turned up a...

I had buried the contents of twelve large jars in the garden after dark, hoping that my influence as a conserver would not be diminished. How did she know? I looked up from my s...

By the time we reached the top we knew that the shower was to be a heavy one. There was a cave over the ridge on the Mossy Creek side, where we could take shelter. But we would...

“You reckon,” he said, coming back, “if you saw me as fur off as that black oak on the hill yander, an’ I had my back to you, an’ you didn’t know I had these clo’s, you reckon y...

A year later Evvie was “talkin’ to” Cleve Saunders. He was a good boy who had here and there learned the carpenter’s trade. Occasionally he would go to Asheville to work on a jo...

“No, but I was aggervatin’ him. I hated Lizzie Bowles an’ her silk dresses, an’ when he swore an’ told me to go back, I picked up a rock an’ if he hadn’t jumped I’d a broke his...

“Yer like my first wife,” said Snead, striding alongside of me. “Nothin’ could head her. You’ve heard ’bout the man that had had three wives an’ when he prayed he would say: ‘Go...

“He’ll buy that feller right off the pole, an’ we’ll save time by drappin’ him there. Abe’s wantin’ to git a hog to pen right now, an’ he’ll give you six dollars fer that b’ar.”

She had the same success with the boys’ shirts. They had been accustomed to one sleazy shirt for Sundays and rags for work-days. Now, released from the commercially constant gra...

During her frictionally industrious year, the stream of company had somewhat lessened, but within a month after her return to the old smiling status it had resumed its normal fl...

So Mrs. Haynes’s invitation was accepted. Serena and I were to stay until the next day, but Len and the daughter, Lonie, were to return that evening to look after the children,...

“There ain’t any man, er woman nuther, in this country,” he said, “who knows more about that than I do. It begun ’long in the last year o’ Callie’s lifetime, an’ I reckon I wuz...

“She found out where Nathe kept the aperns an’ trimmin’s an’ things he wore at his lodge meetin’s. He thought more o’ them cooterments than anything he had. Nan got the key to t...