Part 15

No element of wealth or advantage of position seems lacking to make this place one of the controlling points of that vast commercial movement which is binding the North and the South together, and changing the relation of Kentucky to both, by making it the great highway of railway connection, the fresh centre of manufacture and distribution, and the lasting fountain-head of mineral supply.

VI

Attention is thus briefly directed to that line of towns which are springing up, or will in time spring up, in the mountain passes of the Cumberland, and are making the backwoods of Kentucky the fore-front of a new civilization. Through these three passes in the outer wall of Cumberland Mountain, and through that pass at Pineville in the inner wall behind Cumberland Gap--through these four it is believed that there must stream the railroads carrying to the South its timbers and coals; to the North its timbers, coal, and iron; and carrying to both from these towns, as independent centres of manufacture, all those products the crude materials of which exist in economic combinations on the spot.

It is idle to say that all these places cannot become important. The competition will be keen, and the fittest will survive; but all these are fit to survive, each having advantages of its own. Big Stone Gap lies so much nearer the East and the Atlantic seaboard; Big Creek Gap so much nearer the West and the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and the Lakes; Cumberland Gap and Pineville so much nearer an intermediate region.

But as the writer has stated, it is the human, not the industrial, problem to be solved by this development that possessed for him the main interest. One seems to see in the perforation and breaking up of Cumberland Mountain an event as decisive of the destiny of Kentucky as though the vast wall had fallen, destroying the isolation of the State, bringing into it the new, and letting the old be scattered until it is lost. But while there is no space here to deal with those changes that are rapidly passing over Kentucky life and obliterating old manners and customs, old types of character and ideals of life, old virtues and graces as well as old vices and horrors--there is a special topic too closely connected with the foregoing facts not to be considered: the effect of this development upon the Kentucky mountaineers.

The buying up of the mountain lands has unsettled a large part of these people. Already there has been formed among them a class of tenants paying rent and living in their old homes. But in the main there are three movements among them. Some desert the mountains altogether, and descend to the Blue-grass Region with a passion for farming. On county-court days in blue-grass towns it has been possible of late to notice this peculiar type mingling in the market-places with the traditional type of blue-grass farmer. There is thus going on, especially along the border counties, a quiet interfusion of the two human elements of the Kentucky highlander and the Kentucky lowlander, so long distinct in blood, physique, history, and ideas of life. To less extent, the mountaineers go farther west, beginning life again beyond the Mississippi.

A second general tendency among them is to be absorbed by the civilization that is springing up in the mountains. They flock to these towns, keep store, are shrewd and active speculators in real estate, and successful developers of small capital. The first business house put up in the new Pineville was built by a mountaineer.

But the third, and, as far as can be learned, the most general movement among them is to retire at the approach of civilization to remoter regions of the mountains, where they may live without criticism or observation their hereditary, squalid, unambitious, stationary life. But to these retreats they must in time be followed, therefrom dislodged, and again set going. Thus a whole race of people are being scattered, absorbed, civilized. You may go far before you will find a fact so full of consequences to the future of the State.

Within a few years the commonwealth of Kentucky will be a hundred years old. All in all, it would seem that with the close of its first century the old Kentucky passes away; and that the second century will bring in a new Kentucky--new in many ways, but new most of all on account of the civilization of the Cumberland.

THE END

FLUTE AND VIOLIN,

And Other Kentucky Tales and Romances. By JAMES LANE ALLEN. With Illustrations. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50.

A careful perusal of the six tales here printed reveals and emphasizes a rare talent and a power in romantic fiction which are as rare as they are acceptable.... Our native fiction can show nothing finer in its way than these beautiful Kentucky stories, which are all the better for having a Southern flavor, and picturing an ideal side of Southern life.--_Hartford Courant._

The stories of this volume are fiction of high artistic value--fiction to be read and remembered as something rare, fine, and deeply touching.--_Independent_, N. Y.

These are beautiful sketches.... Never, perhaps, has the charm of Kentucky scenery been more vividly and invitingly illustrated than in this work, and for tenderness of touch and pathetic interest few stories can equal "Sister Dolorosa." In all the tales there is a delicious spice of romance, while the artistic taste in which they are told makes them models of good story telling.--_Observer_, N. Y.

Very charming stories.... "Two Gentlemen of Kentucky" is an especially delightful sketch.--_N. Y. Sun._

In these stories Mr. Allen has given us some tender and touching work, which is characteristic and unhackneyed, and of which the individual flavor is most refreshing. There is, too, a power in these tales which touches the reader.--_Boston Courier._

All the stories are unusual in character, scene, and treatment, and all will repay careful reading.--_San Francisco Chronicle._

With the temperament and sympathies of the idealist, Mr. James Lane Allen combines the fidelity to detail usually associated only with the strict adherent of realism in art, and the result is--for the reader somewhat satiated with the outpourings of conventional story-writers--a series of entirely new and grateful sensations.--_Boston Beacon._

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.