The Call of the Cumberlands

"All right," he acquiesced. "You l'arn me all them things, an' I'll be

obleeged ter ye. Things is diff'rent in diff'rent places. I reckon the

Souths hes a right ter behave es good es anybody."

When a man, whose youth and courage are at their zenith, and whose

brain is tuned to concert pitch, is thrown neck and crop out of squalid

isolation into the melting pot of Manhattan, puzzling problems of

readjustment must follow. Samson's half-starved mind was reaching out

squid-like tentacles in every direction. He was saying little, seeing

much, not yet coordinating or tabulating, but grimly bolting every

morsel of enlightenment. Later, he would digest; now, he only gorged.

Before he could hope to benefit by the advanced instruction of the life

-classes, he must toil and sweat over the primer stages of drawing.

Several months were spent laboring with charcoal and paper over plaster

casts in Lescott's studio, and Lescott himself played instructor. When

the skylight darkened with the coming of evening, the boy whose

mountain nature cried out for exercise went for long tramps that

carried him over many miles of city pavements, and after that, when the

gas was lit, he turned, still insatiably hungry, to volumes of history,

and algebra, and facts. So gluttonous was his protégé's application

that the painter felt called on to remonstrate against the danger of

overwork. But Samson only laughed; that was one of the things he had

learned to do since he left the mountains.

"I reckon," he drawled, "that as long as I'm at work, I kin keep out

of trouble. Seems like that's the only way I kin do it."

* * * * * A sloop-rigged boat with a crew of two was dancing before a brisk

breeze through blue Bermuda waters. Off to the right, Hamilton rose

sheer and colorful from the bay. At the tiller sat the white-clad

figure of Adrienne Lescott. Puffs of wind that whipped the tautly

bellying sheets lashed her dark hair about her face. Her lips, vividly

red like poppy-petals, were just now curved into an amused smile, which

made them even more than ordinarily kissable and tantalizing. Her

companion was neglecting his nominal duty of tending the sheet to watch

her.

"Wilfred," she teased, "your contrast is quite startling--and, in a

way, effective. From head to foot, you are spotless white--but your

scowl is absolutely 'the blackest black that our eyes endure.' And,"

she added, in an injured voice, "I'm sure I've been very nice to you."

"I have not yet begun to scowl," he assured her, and proceeded to show

what superlatives of saturnine expression he held in reserve. "See

here, Drennie, I know perfectly well that I'm a sheer imbecile to

reveal the fact that you've made me mad. It pleases you too perfectly.

It makes you happier than is good for you, but----"