ness and receptiveness which fit him today for a develop-
ment more rapid than the world has ever witnessed. He
stands out before the world today a creature wonderfully
interesting in his possibilities for development, and won-
derfully pathetic and appealing in his lack of opportunities.
    His intellect has never been weakened by wines or dis-
sipating narcotics; his perceptions have never been dulled
by the glitter and glare and rush of a money-mad world,
and his blood has never been infused with the sluggish,
impure blood of alien races. When opportunities are added
commensurate with these natural advantages, a new and
distinct and powerful type of citizen will enter the arena
of America's activities and America's achievements, to
measure his abilities against those who have inherited gen-
erations of culture, and to add his quota of greatness and
usefulness to the nation's citizenship.
    An analysis of the character of an individual may guide
us in determining his worthiness, his needs and his possi-
bilities. Heredity, that powerful agent which, though it
may not fix a destiny against all environment, may invest
a character with such qualities of true greatness as will
forbid contentment with an inferior sphere, has lavished
upon the mountain child qualities of honesty, pride, origin-
ality, ambition, loyalty and reverence.
    Honesty is one of the most pronounced characteristics
of the mountain child. His contempt for dishonesty, in any
form, is always strongly manifested. The boy who cheats
in a mountain school is promptly banished from the play-
ground, an outcast from the associations and good offices of
his fellows; while the one who fights and conc uers is
eulogized and worshipped as a hero. And when the moun-
tain boy becomes a mountain man, it is because of this same
overwhelming contempt for dishonesty that he has earned
the reputation as juror for sending to the penitentiary the
man who has stolen a hog, while he oftentimes exonerates
the one who has taken human life. Locks and keys are
superfluous attachments on the doors of mountain homes.
Public sentiment is sufficiently strong to bar all attempt at
theft, and robbery is, in that country, a thing unknown.
The mountain child, backed by generations of honest men
and women and having the abomination for dishonesty so
strongly inbred, absolutely will not compromise wvith it in
5