The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills

There is nothing so typical as a fair in the Tennessee Valley. It is the one time in the year when everybody meets everybody else. Besides being the harvest time of crops, of fr...

And so there rode out of the gates of The Gaffs a white-haired old man, who sat his superb horse well. He was followed by a negro on a mule.

Love is love and there is nothing in all the world like it. Its romance comes but once, and it is the perfume that precedes the ripened fruit of all after life. It is not amenab...

Mrs. Watts ate, always, by candle-light. The sun, she thought, would be dishonored, were he to find her home in disorder, her breakfast uncooked, her day's work not ready for he...

It is true the man was attempting to commit murder in the face of the law of the land; and in attempting it had shot the representative of the law. It is true, also, that he had...

As Jud went out of the dilapidated gate at Millwood, he chuckled to himself. He had, indeed, accomplished something. He had gained a decided advance in the labor circles of the...

And now no one stood between the prisoner and death but the old preacher and the tall man in the uniform of a Captain of Artillery. And death it meant to all of them, defenders...

The three had been sitting in Westmoreland library this Sunday night--for Richard Travis came regularly every Sunday night, and he had been talking about the progress of the mil...

Archie B. trotted off, striking a path leading through the wood. It was a near cut to the log school house which stood in an old field, partly grown up in scrub-oaks and bushes.

Jack Bracken was comfortably fixed in his underground home. There was every comfort for living. It was warm in winter and cool in summer, and in another apartment adjoining his...

Bud was now in a seventh heaven. He was riding behind Ben Butler, the greatest horse in the world, and talking to the Bishop, the only person who ever heard the sound of his voi...

The autumn had deepened--the cotton had been picked. The dry stalks, sentinelling the seared ground, waved their tattered remnants of unpicked bolls to and fro--summer's battle...

The whistle of the mill had scarcely awakened Cottontown the next morning before Archie B., hatless and full of excitement, came over to the Bishop with a message from his mothe...

"Lily has been taken home," he said as she walked out with him. "She is safe and will be cared for--so will be your father. I will explain it to you as we drive to Millwood."

That Monday was a memorable day for Helen Conway. She went to the mill with less bitterness than ever before--the sting of it all was gone--for she felt that she was helpless to...

A large dog, brindled and lean, walked complacently and condescendingly in, followed by his master. At a glance, the least imaginative could see that Jud Carpenter, the Whipper-...

Upon the pommel of his saddle lay a long single-barreled squirrel gun, for the hills were full of squirrels, and Jud was fond of a tender one, now and then. Behind him, as usual...

Jim sat in the buggy at The Gaffs holding the horses while Richard Travis, having eaten his supper, was lighting a cigar and drawing on his overcoat, preparatory to riding over...

The next Sunday was an interesting occasion--voted so by all Cottontown when it was over. There was a large congregation out, caused by the announcement of the Bishop the week b...

It was growing late when the old preacher left Westmoreland and rode leisurely back toward the cabin on Sand Mountain. The horse he was riding--a dilapidated roan--was old and b...

Bonaparte lay on the little front porch--the loafing place which opened into Billy Buch's bar-room. Apparently, he was asleep and basking in the warm Autumn sunshine. In reality...

It was nearly time for the mill to close when Mammy Maria, her big honest face beaming with satisfaction at the surprise she had in store for Helen, began to wind her red silk b...

Strength was written in the face of Richard Travis--the owner of The Gaffs--intellectual, physical, passion-strength, strength of purpose and of doing. Strength, but not moral s...

He had heard that Edward Conway had come to the sorest need--even to where he would place his daughters in the mill. None knew better than Hillard Watts what this would mean soc...

The last of the sentence came so slowly that it sank almost into silence, as of one beginning a sentence and becoming so absorbed in the subject as to forget the speech. Then sh...

An hour later Mrs. Westmore had gone to her room and Alice had been singing his favorite songs. Her singing always had a peculiar influence over Richard Travis--a moral influenc...

It happened that morning that the old Bishop was on his daily round, visiting the sick of Cottontown. He went every day, from house to house, helping the sick, cheering the well...

"It was not my skill that has saved you," said the old surgeon who had been through two wars and who knew wounds as he did maps of battlefields he had fought on. "No," he said,...

All that week at the mill, Richard Travis had been making preparations for his trip to Boston. Regularly twice, and often three times a year, he had made the same journey, where...

When Helen went in Kingsley sat at the Superintendent's desk, issuing orders on the Secretary and Treasurer, Richard Travis, who sat at his desk near by and paid the wages in si...

Richard Travis sat his saddle horse in the slightly stooping way of the old fox-hunter--not the most graceful seat, but the most natural and comfortable for hard riding. Alice g...

An hour afterward, the old nurse found Helen at the piano, her head bowed low over the old yellow keys. "It's gittin' t'wards dinner time, chile," she said tenderly, "an' time I...

It was a great fire the mill made, lighting the valley for miles. All Cottontown was there to see it burn, hushed, with set faces, some of anger, some of fear--but all in strick...

No one would ever have supposed that the big blacksmith at the village was Jack Bracken. All the week he worked at his trade--so full of his new life that it shone continually i...

"Now, it's this way, my brethren: God made cotton for a mill. You can't get aroun' that; and the mill is to give people wuck an' this wuck is to clothe the worl'. That's all pla...

He came in as naturally as if the house were still inhabited, though he saw the emptiness of it all, and guessed the cause. But when he saw Helen, a flushed surprise beamed thro...

It is good for the world now and then to go back to first principles in religion. It would be better for it never to get away from them; but, since it has that way of doing--of...

When the directors of a cotton mill, in a Massachusetts village, decided, in the middle '70's, to move their cotton factory from New England to Alabama, they had two objects in...

It is remarkable how small a part of our real life the world knows--how little our most intimate friends know of the secret influences which have proven to be climaxes, at the t...

All the week the two girls worked together at the mill; a week which was to Helen one long nightmare, filled, as it was, with the hum and roar of machinery, the hot breath of th...

He was a handsome lad with a proud and independent way about him. He carried his head up and there was that calmness that showed good blood. There was even a haughtiness which w...

Two hours before the mill closed Richard Travis came hurriedly into the mill office. There had been business engagements to be attended to in the town before leaving that night...

"Bud Billings--plague his old crotchety head--. He kno's that machine's got to run, whether no. Narthin's the matter with him--bet a dollar his wife licked him last night an' he...

Edward Conway sat on the little porch till the stars came out, wondering why the old nurse did not return. Sober as he was and knew he would ever be, it seemed that a keen sensi...

The sensational features of it required prompt action on his and Alice's part, and their decision was quickly made: they would be married that Sunday afternoon in the little chu...

It was Sunday and Jack Bracken had been out all the afternoon, hunting for Cap'n Tom--as he had been in the morning, when not at church. Hitching up the old horse, the Bishop st...

Never had the two old servants been so happy as they were that night after their rescue. At first they looked on it as a miracle, in which the spirits of their young master and...

The drinks made them feel good. They resolved to feel better, so they drank again. As they drank the talk grew louder. They were joined by others from the town--ne'er-do-wells,...

No one had ever heard the Bishop explain his curious surplice but once, and that had been several years before, when the little chapel, by the aid of a concert Miss Alice gave,...

All the week, since the scene at Maggie's deathbed, Alice Westmore had remained at home, while strange, bitter feelings, such as she had never felt before, surged in her heart....

"This bein' Hard-shell Sunday," said the Bishop that afternoon when his congregation met, "cattle of that faith will come up to the front rack for fodder. Elder Butts will he'p...

Then the old man remembered that he was making Bud suffer with his own sorrow, and when Bud looked at him again the Bishop had wiped his eyes on the back of his hand and was smi...

For the first time in years, the next Sunday the little church on the mountain side was closed, and all Cottontown wondered. Never before had the old man missed a Sabbath aftern...

After he returned from Westmoreland, Mammy Charity brought him his cocktail, and tidied up his room, and beat up the feathers in his pillows and bed--for she believed in the old...

over twenty, the privilege always being given by the mill's physician to the girl who seemed most in need of a week's rest. It came to be a great social feature also, and any pr...

Night--for night and death, are they not one? A farm cabin in a little valley beyond the mountain. An Indian Summer night in November, but a little fire is pleasant, throwing it...

In the library, Travis and Mrs. Westmore sat for some time in silence. Travis, as usual, smoked, in his thoughtful way watching the firelight which flickered now and then, half...

It was an hour before Clay Westmore rode back to Millwood. He had been too busy plowing that day to get, sooner, a specimen of the rock he had seen out-cropping on Sand Mountain...

But Jud Carpenter did not finish his work by starting the slubbing machine. Samantha Carewe, one of the main loom women, was absent. Going over to her cottage, he was told by he...

In a few days Shiloh was up, but the mere shadow of a little waif, following the old man around the place. She needed rest and good food and clothes; and Bull Run and Seven Days...

The preacher, the philosopher, the poet, the ruler--it matters not what his name--he who first solves the problem of how to keep mankind achieving will solve the problem of huma...

The frost had touched the gums and maples in the Tennessee Valley, and the wood, which lined every hill and mountain side, looked like huge flaming bouquets--large ones, where t...

"Well," he went on reminiscently, "I'll have to finish my tale an' tell you how I throwed the cold steel into Jud Carpenter when I got back. I saw I had it to do, to work back i...

It was the middle of Saturday afternoon, and all the week Edward Conway had fought against the terrible thirst which was in him. Not since Monday morning had he touched whiskey...

But the excitement of the night had been great; his sudden awakening from sleep, his missing Captain Tom, and finding him in time to prevent a tragedy, had aroused him thoroughl...

It was Saturday noon and Maggie was ready to go, though the mill did not shut down until six that day. And so she found herself standing and looking with tearful eyes at the mac...

"There's only a fair sprinklin' of Hillites that lives nigh about here," said the Bishop, "an' they come because it suits them better than the high f'lutin' services in town. Wh...

It was after dark when the old man, pale, and his knees still shaking with the terrible strain and excitement of it all, reached his cabin on the mountain. The cheers of the gra...

The real heroes of the war have not been decorated yet. They have not even been pensioned, for many of them lie in forgotten graves, and those who do not are not the kind to cla...

Man may breed up all animals but himself. Strive as he may, the laws of heredity are hidden. "Like produces like or the likeness of an ancestor" is the unalterable law of the lo...

The discovery of coal and iron made both the old Bishop and Westmoreland rich. Captain Tom sent James Travis to West Point and Archie B. to Annapolis, and their records were wor...