such as make the esthetic shudder; one has to
admit that as a work of art he is almost as bad as the statues
cluttering New York City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical;
they see him not with the eyes of art but with the deeper vision of
the heart. He stands for something that is gone on the wind and the
names he guards are our names.

This is not irrelevant. It is merely to explain something that is
inherent in the living spirit of all South Carolina; wherefore it
explains my Appleboro, the real inside-Appleboro.

Outwardly Appleboro is just one of those quiet, conservative, old
Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs and traditions of their
fathers, they would as lief white-wash what they firmly believe to be
the true and natural character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as
they would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody will give a
backyard henhouse a needed coat or two; but a front fence? Never! It
isn't the thing. Nobody does it. All normal South Carolinians come
into the world with a native horror of paint and whitewash and they
depart hence even as they were born. In consequence, towns like
Appleboro take on the venerable aspect of antiquity, peacefully
drowsing among immemorial oaks draped with long, gray, melancholy
moss.

Not that we are cut off from the world, or that we have escaped the
clutch of commerce. We have the usual shops and stores, even an
emporium or two, and street lights until twelve, and the mills and
factory. We have the river trade, and two railroads tap our rich
territory to fetch and carry what we take and give. And, except in the
poor parish of which I, Armand De Rance, am pastor, and some few
wealthy families like the Eustises, Agur's wise and noble prayer has
been in part granted to us; for if it has not been possible to remove
far from us all vanity and lies, yet we have been given neither
poverty nor riches, and we are fed with food convenient for us.

In Appleboro the pleasant and prejudiced Old looks askance at the
noisy and intruding New, before which, it is forced to retreat--always
without undue or undignified haste, however, and always unpainted and
unreconstructed. It is a town where families live in houses that have
sheltered generations of the same name, using furniture that was not
new when Marion's men hid in the swamps and the redcoats overran the
country-side. Almost everybody has a garden, full of old-fashioned
shrubs and flowers, and fine tree