Thursday, March 17, 1921
Congress is to meet in special session April 4th, so the period between March 4th and April 4th is a blessed calm halcyon to a grateful Christian nation…
President Harding improves upon further acquaintance. He has diffused a conciliatory spirit that is healing to the nation, and gives signs of knowing what is the matter in these times of suspicion and distrust.
He is there by no help of ours. We have been in the newspaper business since the days of Harrison. We have had to comment on the current events during ten terms or parts of terms of presidents. We have been loyal to each one of them while they remained in power and have never had occasion to point out any palpable error in judgment on the part of any one of them, for all executive acts are so well considered that, in our recollection, there has never been an executive action that was anything more than debatable. The same thing can be said about the judicial department. We wish the same thing could be said about Congress. But there is a crudeness and irresponsibility about that over-manned department that keeps the country in a turmoil and makes the other two branches shine by comparison…
CLOVERLICK
Miss Ina Lewis was visiting her parents Saturday and Sunday.
Our school is progressing nicely with Misses Palmer, Lewis and Coyner as teachers.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Wilfong, a daughter.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. George Coyner, a son.
Claude Barkley and family, of Elkins were visiting relatives here last week.
The sawmill is running again after being shut down a few days.
BUCKEYE
The rheumatic sufferers are better.
D. A. McNeill, the veteran farmer, has been repairing fence.
E. C. Sheets took a load of apples to Seebert and brought back 200 sugar buckets for J. W. Carpenter.
Emory Miller is logging on Elk.
The recent cold snap was bitter while it lasted.
Chances are good for sugar making.
“From rocks and sand and barren lands
Good fortune set me free;
From great guns and tattlers’ tongues,
Good Lord deliver me.”
IT ISN’T YOUR TOWN. IT’S YOU
If you want to live in the kind of a town
Like the kind of a town you like,
You needn’t slip your clothes in a grip
And start on a long, long hike.
You’ll only find what you’ve left behind
For there’s nothing really new.
It’s a knock at yourself when you knock your town,
It isn’t the town. It’s you.
Real towns are not made by men afraid
Lest somebody else gets ahead,
When everyone works and nobody shirks
You can raise a town from the dead.
And if, while you make your personal stake,
Your neighbors can make one, too,
Your town will be what you want to see,
It isn’t the town, it’s you.
A TRIP TO POCAHONTAS
continued…
Bartow is a nice little town, situated in the midst of wide bottoms stretching several miles along the Greenbrier river, a most beautiful sight to behold. Standing in those broad bottoms, one looks up the mountainsides to giddy heights and in wonderment at the indescribable scenery with which Nature has adorned that locality. The road winds from the valley up through that battlefield where the Alleghenies slope gradually back from the river, until the crest of the ridge is reached at a distance of nine miles. This crest is attained in Highland county, Virginia.
There is a generally believed report here that two cannons, one of brass, one of iron, were buried in a swamp here, near the river, and the lower end of the old Burner orchard. Persons who live near the battlefield are continuously finding relicts here, and there are left many visible marks of the activities of those strenuous days, while numerous and curious are the stories told of happenings and alleged happenings hereabouts.
I was told of plots of land at the top of the Cheat mountain which are called “dead circles,” and in which no vegetation will grow. The centers of these seem to be burned and charred. Tradition ascribes these to savage Indians who are said to have burned unfortunate whites at the stake here, while the captors danced joyfully around the flames. Arrowheads and other relicts found here prove that there was a time when the Indians were very numerous in this territory.
Angeline Knight, who is a colored woman, as black as the darkest night between two clouded days and away over a hundred years of age, relates some thrilling events said to have taken place on the borders of this mountain in her earlier days.
Three of my grand-nieces, Lelia, Lena and Mintie Waugh, were children going along a road through the woods when they saw just ahead of them in the brush, a large panther with young ones. The beast jumped into the road close to the children. Lena, next to the youngest, had a sore foot and could not run rapidly, so Mintie, the youngest, a dear brave bit of a girl, stayed in the rear, for she said that Lena couldn’t run fast, and the panther might get her. But the panther disappeared into the woods, and the children were safe.
Another time this dear little Mintie went out to the field in the evening to bring in the cows. A big dog went with her. Mintie told me she had a little light pole in her hand. It was getting late, and she saw the dog baying what she thought to be one of the cows. She ran near to it so that she could punch it with a pole, and was terror-stricken when she found it to be a black bear. She called her father, but the bear got away…
To be continued…