'uns seed any stray shoats?" asked a passer:
"I-uns's uses about here." "Critter" means an animal--"cretur,"
a fellow-creature. "Longsweet-'nin'" and "short sweet'nin'" are
respectively syrup and sugar. The use of the indefinite substantive
pronoun _un_ (the French _on_), modified by the personals, used
demonstratively, and of "done" and "gwine" as auxiliaries, is peculiar
to the mountains, as well on the Wabash and Alleghany, I am told, as
in Tennessee. The practice of dipping--by which is meant not baptism,
but chewing snuff--prevails to a like extent.

In farming they believe in the influence of the moon on all
vegetation, and in pork-butchering and curing the same luminary is
consulted. Leguminous plants must be set out in the light of the
moon--tuberous, including potatoes, in the dark of that satellite. It
is supposed to _govern_ the weather by its dip, not _indicate_ it by
its appearance. The cup or crescent atilt is a wet moon--i.e., the
month will be rainy. A change of the moon forebodes a change of the
weather, and no meteorological statistics can shake their confidence
in the superstition. They, of course, believe in the water-wizard
and his forked wand; and their faith is extended to the discovery
of mineral veins. While writing this I see the statement in a public
journal that Richard Flannery of Cumberland county (Kentucky) uses an
oval ball, of some material known only to himself, which he suspends
between the forks of a short switch. As he walks, holding this
extended, the indicator announces the metal by arbitrary vibrations.
As his investigations are said to be attended with success, possibly
the oval ball is highly magnetized, or contains a lode-stone whose
delicate suspension is affected by the current magnetism, metallic
veins being usually a magnetic centre. Any mass of soft iron in the
position of the dipping-needle is sensibly magnetic, and a solution
of continuity is thus indicated by the vibrations of the delicately
poised instrument. Flaws in iron are detected with absolute certainty
by this method. More probably, however, the whole procedure is pure,
unadulterated humbug. In all such cases the failures are unrecorded,
while the successes are noted, wondered at and published. By shooting
arrows all day, even a blind man may hit the mark sometimes.

During this journey it was a habit with me to relate to my invalid
companion any fact or incident of the day's travel. She came to expect
this, a