ad--a happy-go-lucky fellow from
whom, they said, "you can hear the news jinglin' afore he comes within
gunshot." It amused me to record the many ways he had of announcing his
mission by indirection. Here is the list:

"I'm jes' broguin' about."

"Yes, I'm jest cooterin' around."

"I'm santerin' about."

"Oh, I'm jes' prodjectin' around."

"Jist traffickin' about."

"No, I ain't workin' none--jest spuddin' around."

"Me? I'm jes' shacklin' around."

"Yea, la! I'm jist loaferin' about."

And yet one hears that our mountaineers have a limited vocabulary!

Although this is no place to discuss the mountain dialect, I must
explain that to "brogue" means to go about in brogues (brogans
nowadays). A "cooter" is a box-tortoise, and the noun is turned into a
verb with an ease characteristic of the mountaineers. "Spuddin' around"
means toddling or jolting along. To "shummick" (also "shammick") is to
shuffle about, idly nosing into things, as a bear does when there is
nothing serious in view. And "shacklin' around" pictures a shackly,
loose-jointed way of walking, expressive of the idle vagabond.

A stranger takes the mountaineers for simple characters that can be
gauged at a glance. This illusion--for it is an illusion--comes from
the childlike directness with which they ask him the most intimate
questions about himself, from the genuine good-will with which they
admit him to their homes, and from the stark openness of their domestic
affairs in houses where no privacy can possibly exist.

In so far as simplicity means only a shrewd regard for essentials, a
rigid exclusion of whatever can be done without, perhaps no white race
is nearer a state of nature than these highlanders of ours. Yet this
relates only to the externals of life. Diogenes sat in a tub, but his
thoughts were deep as the sea. And whoever estimates our mountaineers as
a shallow-minded or open-minded people has much to learn.

When Long John asks, "What you aimin' to do up hyur? How much money do
you make? Whar's your old woman?" he does not really expect sincere
answers. Certainly he will take them with more than a grain of salt.
Conversation, with him, is a game. In quizzing you, the interests that
he is actually curious about lie hidden in the back of his head, and he
will proceed toward them by cunning circumventions, seeking to entrap
you into telling the truth by accident. Being himself born to intrigue
and skilled in dodging the leading quest