t places in the world.' I begin to think he was right,
and it is not always the superficial flirting and love-making which is
a part of your coeducational schools,--a thing simply trivial and
naughty,--but often tragic passion instead, quite in harmony with the
title of Dryden's play, 'All for Love, or the World Well Lost'!

"Really, these children of the woods hear the call to mate as
naturally as the birds in the trees, and knowing nothing of Fifth
Avenue brown stone fronts or cozy cottages at Newport, they want to
leave school, gather twigs and build their nests at once. And
sometimes one feels as guilty in breaking up such prospective nests as
when molesting a pair of birds!

"Am I getting to be something of a sentimentalist? Well, I assure you
I am not going to let it grow upon me. I bear sternly in mind that,
like the first pair of human beings in the Garden of Eden, they have
really eaten of the tree of knowledge and know some things which they
ought not to know,--having some secrets from the rest of mankind which
are not at all good for them,--while the things they need to know for
higher, better living are so numerous, that I ruthlessly break the
tenderest hearts, and insist on study and discipline; for nothing but
education, mental, moral and spiritual, will ever bring the greatest
people in the world, the people of the Kentucky mountains, into their
just inheritance! You see how completely identified I am again when I
indulge in Kentucky brag,--which is not so different after all from
the brag of other sections, and I promise not to let this grow upon me
either, for work and not brag is before me, as you know. I want you to
see, however, that I continue to feel the mountaineer is worth working
for.

"But to return to the love-making. Tragedy and comedy are in evidence
enough to lure me into the field of romance, but the practical
hindrances to daily school work are too absorbing for great indulgence
of my pen. Ardent swains pay open court to their sweethearts,
promenading halls and grounds together and even pressing suit in the
class room! While frequently the crowning difficulty in the whole
matter is the pleased approval of parents! Early marriage, you know,
is most common in the mountains, girls of twelve and thirteen often
taking up the duties of wives and the great desire of parents for
their daughters is usually to get them early married off.

"But,--I suspect this is all familiar to you," he remind