h offenders were locked while they
suffered jibes from passing tormentors. Elegant coach-and-four remind
the visitor of days of grandeur of Old Virginia when the FFV's were
entertained at the royal palace. Across the way is the wigmaker's shop,
and the craft house, displaying the Wolcott Collection of ancient tools
and instruments. Here too is seen the Wren building, oldest academic
structure in English America, "first modeled by Sir Christopher Wren."

Even a youngster of the Blue Ridge knows about Yorktown where Lord
Cornwallis surrendered in 1781. "Here's where we fit and plum whopped
the life outten the redcoats," we overheard a mountain boy from a
mission school boasting to his companions.

Within a few short hours I had left behind Old Virginia and its
reminders of colonial days and crossed into the Mountain State.

"There's plenty of beauty and culture in Old Virginia, I'm not denying
that--" Bruce Crawford looked over his spectacles at his inquisitive
visitor--"but there's just as much on this side of the Blue Ridge. We've
got as many wonders under the earth as above it. And"--he turned now in
his swivel chair in his quarters in the Capital to look far up the
Kanawha River--among the many duties of this Fayette County man is that
of letting the world know about his state--"I'm not forgetting Boone
roved these parts. Trapped and hunted right here on the Kanawha. But
what I started to talk about was not the hills, the rivers, and the
caves, but the people." He spoke slowly, deliberately, this sturdy,
well-groomed hillsman. Like Sergeant York of the Tennessee Mountains
Bruce Crawford can, if need be, drop easily back into the dialect of his
people. And he is an accomplished writer. "I don't care enough about it
to follow the profession of writing," he said, and fire glowed in his
gray eyes. "But as old Uncle Dyke Garrett used to say, 'I takened all I
could a while back from furriners' so I cut loose and wrote my notions
about it and it was published in the _West Virginia Review_. Take it
along with you on your travels through the Mountain State and see if
I've come near hitting center."

It seems to me he came mighty near hitting center and with Bruce
Crawford's permission, here are his sentiments:

"In recent weeks two ignorant jibes were flung at the State of West
Virginia, one by a Southern editor and the other by a Northern
cartoonist.

"The editor, a Virginian, moaned that rude mountaineers had routed
D