xt71ns0kst6f https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt71ns0kst6f/data/mets.xml Allen, James Lane, 1849-1925. 19071899  books b92-121-28575457 English Macmillan, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Kentucky Social life and customs. Kentucky Description and travel. Blue-grass region of Kentucky  : and other Kentucky articles / by James Lane Allen. text Blue-grass region of Kentucky  : and other Kentucky articles / by James Lane Allen. 1907 2002 true xt71ns0kst6f section xt71ns0kst6f 























The Blue-Grass Region
    of Kentucky

  IND OTHER ARTICLES

 






















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OLD STONE HOMESTEAD



K I                                                                               ,



I   A

 
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The Blue-Grass



Region



     of Kentucky


AND OTHER KENTUCKr ARTICLES



            DY
    JAMES LANE ALLEN



       ALL-USTRATBED






THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  LONDON: MACMILLAN  CO., LTD.
          1907



AUghts reseed

 
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The Blue-Grass Region

       of Kentucky



 AND OTHER KENTUCKr ARTICLES




              BY

     JAMES LANE ALLEN



        ILL USTRA TED






        Wtb, gord
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  LONDON: MACMILLAN  CO., LTD.
           1907



All rights rerved

 









































      Reprinted March, September, xgoo;
    August, 1907.




















Copyright, 1892, x899, by HARPER  BROTHERS.

              .41 rights reserved.

 

















PREFACE



  THE articles herein reprinted from Harper's
and The Century magazines represent work
done at intervals during the period that the
author was writing the tales already published
under the title of Flute and Violin.
  It was his plan that with each descriptive
article should go a short story dealing with the
same subject, and this plan was in part wrought
out. Thus, with the article entitled "Uncle
Tom at Home" goes the tale entitled "Two
Gentlemen of Kentucky"; and with the article
entitled "A Home of the Silent Brotherhood "
goes the tale entitled " The White Cowl." In
the same way, there were to be short stories
severally dealing with the other subjects em-
braced in this volume. But having in part
wrought out this plan, the author has let it
rest-not finally, perhaps, but because in the
mean time he has found himself engaged with
other themes.
                                  J. L. A.

 
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               CONTENTS


                                         PAGS
THE BLUE-GRASS REGION . . . . . . . . .     3

UNCLE TOM AT HOME  . . . . . . . . . .     45
COUNTY COURT DAY IN KENTUCKY. . . . . .    87

KENTUCKY FAIRS . . . . . . . . . . . . I17
A HO-mE OF THE SILENT BROTHERHOOD  . . . . 149
HOMESTEADS OF THE BLUE-GRASS  . . . . . . I8I
THROUGH CUNIBMIRLAND GAP ON HORSEBACK . . . 217
MOUNTAIN PASSES OF THE CUMBERLAND . . . . 249

 
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ILLUSTRATIONS



OLD STONE HOMESTEAD  .
SHEEP IN WOODLAWN PASTURE .
NEGRO CABINS .
CATTLE IN BLUE-GRASS PASTURE.
HARRODSBURG PIKE . . . . . . . .
THE MAMMY   . . . . . . . . . .
THE COOK .  . .  . .  . . .  . .   .
THE PREACHER  .
COURT-HOUSE SQUARE, LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY
THE " TICKLER".
GENTLEMEN OF LEISURE  . . . . . .
HARNESS HORSES. . . . . . . . .
A FORTNIGHTLY SHAVE. . . . .
OLD FERRY AT POINT BURNSIDE . . . .
NATIVE TYPES. . . . . . . . . .
FORD ON THE CUMBERLAND.



. Frontisjkcs
Facing p. 6
     "'4


  "   30

  "   58
  I"  64
  Is  78

    94
  "   96
      'OS
  "  I32
  I  i66
      218
  "  223
      274

 
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THE BLUE-GRASS REGION

 
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I



O     NE might well name it Saxon grass, so
         much is it at home in Saxon England,
         so like the loveliest landscapes of
green Saxon England has it made other land-
scapes on which dwell a kindred race in Amer-
ica, and so akin is it to the type of nature that
is peculiarly Saxon: being a hardy, kindly,
beautiful, nourishing stock; loving rich lands
and apt to find out where they lie; uproot-
ing inferior aborigines, but stoutly defending
its new domain against all invaders; paying
taxes well, with profits to boot; thriving best
in temperate latitudes and checkered sunshine;
benevolent to flocks and herds; and allying it-
self closely to the history of any people whose
content lies in simple plenty and habitual
peace-the perfect squire-and-yeoman type of
grasses.
  In the earliest spring nothing is sooner afield
to contest possession of the land than the blue-
grass. Its little green spear-points are the first
                     3

 








        The Blue -Grass Region

to pierce the soft rich earth, and array them-
selves in countless companies over the rolling
landscapes, while its roots reach out in every di-
rection for securer foothold. So early does this
take place, that a late hoar-frost will now and
then mow all these bristling spear-points down.
Sometimes a slow-falling sleet will incase each
emerald blade in glittering silver; but the sun
by-and-by melts the silver, leaving the blade
unhurt. Or a light snowfall will cover tufts
of it over, making pavilions and colonnades
with white roofs resting on green pillars. The
roofs vanish anon, and the columns go on si-
lently rising. But usually the final rigors of
the season prove harmless to the blue-grass.
One sees it most beautiful in the spring, just
before the seed stalks have shot upward from
the flowing tufts, and while the thin, smooth,
polished blades, having risen to their greatest
height, are beginning to bend, or break and fall
over on themselves and their nether fellows
from sheer luxuriance. The least observant
eye is now constrained to note that blue-grass
is the characteristic element of the Kentucky
turf-the first element of beauty in the Ken-
tucky landscape. Over the stretches of wood-
land pasture, over the meadows and the lawns,
by the edges of turnpike and lane, in the fence
corners-wherever its seed has been allowed
                     4

 








        The Blue - Grass Region

to flourish-its spreads a verdure so soft in fold
and fine in texture, so entrancing by its fresh-
ness and fertility, that it looks like a deep-ly-
ing, thick-matted emerald moss. One thinks
of it, not as some heavy, velvet-like carpet
spread over the earth, but as some light, seam-
less veil that has fallen delicately around it,
and that might be blown away by a passing
breeze.
  After this you will not see the blue-grass so
beautiful. The seed ripens in June. Already
the slender seed stalks have sprung up above
the uniform green level, bearing on their sum-
mits the fuzzy, plumy, purplish seed-vessels;
and save the soft, feathery undulations of
these as the wind sweeps over them, the beauty
of the blue-grass is gone. Moreover, certain
robust and persistent weeds and grasses have
been growing apace, roughening and diversify-
ing the sward, so that the vista is less charm-
ing. During July and August the blue-grass
lies comparatively inactive, resting from fructi-
fication, and missing, as well, frequent show-
ers to temper the sunshine. In seasons of se-
vere drought it even dies quite away, leaving
the surface of the earth as bare and brown as
a winter landscape or arid plain. Where it
has been closely grazed, one may, in walking
over it, stir such a dust as one would raise on
                     5

 








        The Blue-Grass Region

a highway; and the upturned, half -exposed
rootlets seem entirely dead. But the moder-
ated heats and the gentle rains that usually
come with the passing of summer bring on a
second vigorous growth, and in the course of
several weeks the landscape is covered with a
verdure rivalling the luxuriance of spring.
  There is something incongruous in this mar-
vellous autumnal rejuvenescence of the blue-
grass. All nature appears content and rest-
ing. The grapes on the sunward slopes have
received their final coloring of purple and
gold; the heavy mast is beginning to drop in
the forest, followed by the silent lapse of rus-
set and crimson leaves; the knee-deep after-
math has paled its green in the waiting au-
tumn fields; the plump children are stretch-
ing out their nut-stained hands towards the
first happy fire-glow on chill, dark evenings;
and the cricket has left the sere, dead garden
for a winter home at the hearth. Then, lo! as
if by some freakish return of the spring to the
edge of winter the pastures are suddenly as
fresh and green as those of May. The effect
on one who has the true landscape passion is
transporting and bewildering. Such contrasts
of color it is given one to study nowhere but in
blue-grass lands. It is as if the seasons were
met to do some great piece of brocading.
                     6



 















































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        The Blue-Grass Region

One sees a new meaning in Poe's melancholy
thought-the leaves of the many - colored
grass.
  All winter the blue-grass continues green-
it is always green, of course, never blue-and it
even grows a little, except when the ground is
frozen. Thus, year after year, drawing need-
ful nourishment from the constantly disinte-
grating limestone below, flourishes here as no-
where else in the world this wonderful grass.
  Even while shivering in the bleak winds of
March, the young lambs frolicked away from
the distent teats of the ewes, with growing rel-
ish for its hardy succulence, and by - and - by
they were taken into market the sooner and
the fatter for its developing qualities. During
the long summer, foaming pails of milk and
bowls of golden butter have testified to the
Kentucky housewife with what delight the
cows have ruminated on the stores gathered
each plentiful day.  The Kentucky farmer
knows that the distant metropolitan beef-eater
will in time have good reason to thank it for
yonder winding herd of sleek young steers
that are softly brushing their rounded sides
with their long, white, silky tails, while they
plunge their puffing noses into its depths and
tear away huge mouthfuls of its inexhaustible
richness. Thorough -bred sire and dam and
                      7

 








        The Blue-Grass Region

foal in paddocks or deeper pastures have drawn
from it form and quality and organization:
hardness and solidity of bone, strength of ten-
don, firmness and elasticity of muscle, power
of nerve, and capacity of lung. Even the Fal-
staff porkers, their eyes gleaming with glut-
tonous enjoyment, have looked to it for the
shaping of their posthumous hams and the
padding of their long backbones in depths of
snowy lard. In winter mules and sheep and
horses paw away the snow to get at the green
shoots that lie covered over beneath the full,
rank growth of autumn, or they find it attrac-
tive provender in their ricks. For all that live
upon it, it is perennial and abundant, beautiful
and beneficent-the first great natural factor
in the prosperity of the Kentucky people.
What wonder if the Kentuckian, like the
Greek of old, should wish to have even his
paradise well set in grass; or that, with a
knowing humor, he should smile at David for
saying, " He maketh his grass to grow upon
the mountains," inasmuch as the only grass
worth speaking of grows on his beloved plain!



 


















1I



BUT if grass is the first element in the
      lovely Kentucky landscape, as it must
      be in every other one, by no means
should it be thought sole or chief. In Dante,
as Ruskin points out, whenever the country is
to be beautiful, we come into open air and
open meadows. Homer places the sirens in a
meadow when they are to sing. Over the
blue-grass, therefore, one walks into the open
air and open meadows of the blue-grass land.
  This has long had reputation for being one
of the very beautiful spots of the earth, and it
is worth while to consider those elements of
natural scenery wherein the beauty consists.
  One might say, first, that the landscape pos-
sesses what is so very rare even in beautiful
landscapes-the quality of gracefulness. No-
where does one encounter vertical lines or
violent slopes; nor are there perfectly level
stretches like those that make the green fields
monotonous in the Dutch lowlands. The dark,
                     9

 









        The Blue-Grass Region

finely sifted soil lies deep over the limestone
hills,.filling out their chasms to evenness, and
rounding their jagged or precipitous edges,
very much as a heavy snow at night will leave
the morning landscape with mitigated rugged-
ness and softer curves. The long, slow action
of water has further moulded everything into
symmetry, so that the low ancient hills de-
scend to the valleys in exquisite folds and un-
interrupted slopes. The whole great plain un-
dulates away league after league towards the
distant horizon in an endless succession of gen-
tle convex surfaces-like the easy swing of the
sea-presenting a panorama of subdued swells
and retiring surges. Everything in the blue-
grass country is billowy and afloat. The spirit
of nature is intermediate between violent en-
ergy and complete repose; and the effect of
this mild activity is kept from monotony by
the accidental perspective of position, creat-
ing variety of details.
  One traces this quality of gracefulness in the
labyrinthine courses of the restful streams, in
the disposition of forest masses, in the free, un-
studied succession of meadow, field, and lawn.
Surely it is just this order of low hill scenery,
just these buoyant undulations, that should be
covered with the blue-grass. Had Hawthorne
ever looked on this landscape when most beau-
                     10

 









        The Blue-Grass Region

tiful, he could never have said of England that
"no other country will ever have this charm
of lovely verdure."
  Characteristically beautiful spots on the
blue - grass landscape are the woodland past-
ures. A Kentucky wheat - field, a Kentucky
meadow, a Kentucky lawn, is but a field, a
meadow, a lawn, found elsewhere; but a Ken-
tucky sylvan slope has a loveliness unique
and local. Rightly do poets make pre-eminent-
ly beautiful countries abound in trees. John
Burroughs, writing with enthusiasm of Eng-
lish woods, has said that "in midsummer the
hair of our trees seems to stand on end; the
woods have a frightened look, or as if they
were just recovering from a debauch." This
is not true of the Kentucky woods, unless it be
in some season of protracted drought. The
foliage of the Kentucky trees is not thin nor
dishevelled, the leaves crowd thick to the very
ends of the boughs, and spread themselves
full to the sky, making, where they are close
together, under-spaces of green gloom scarcely
shot through by sunbeams. Indeed, one often
finds here the perfection of tree forms. I
mean that rare development which brings the
extremities of the boughs to the very limit of
the curve that nature intends the tree to de-
fine as the peculiar shape of its species. Any
                    I I

 









        The Blue - Grass Region

but the most favorable conditions leave the
outline jagged, faulty, and untrue. Here and
there over the blue-grass landscape one's eye
rests on a cone-shaped, or dome-shaped, or in-
verted pear-shaped, or fan-shaped tree. Nor
are fulness of leafage and perfection of form
alone to be noted; pendency of boughs is an-
other distinguishing feature. One who loves
and closely studies trees will note here the com-
parative absence of woody stiffness. It is ex-
pected that the willow and the elm should
droop their branches. Here the same char-
acteristic strikes you in the wild cherry, the
maple, and the sycamore-even in great wal-
nuts and ashes and oaks; and I have occasion-
ally discovered exceeding grace of form in
hackberries (which usually look paralytic and
as if waiting to hobble away on crutches), in
locusts, and in the harsh hickories-loved by
Thoreau.
  But to return to the woodland pastures.
They are the last vestiges of that unbroken
primeval forest which, together with cane-
brakes and pea-vines, covered the face of the
country when it was first beheld by the pioneers.
No blue-grass then. In these woods the timber
has been so cut out that the remaining trees
often stand clearly revealed in their entire form,
their far-reaching boughs perhaps not even
                     12

 








        The Blue - Grass Region

touching those of their nearest neighbor, or in-
terlacing them with ineffectual fondness. There
is something pathetic in the sight, and in the
thought of those innumerable stricken ones that
in years agone were dismembered for cord-wood
and kitchen stoves and the vast fireplaces of
old-time negro cabins. In the well-kept blue-
glass pasture undergrowth and weeds are an-
nually cut down, so that the massive trunks
are revealed from a distance; the better be-
cause the branches seldom are lower than ten
to twenty feet above the earth. Thus in its
daily course the sun strikes every point beneath
the broad branches, and nourishes the blue-
grass up to the very roots. All savagery, all
wildness, is taken out of these pastures; they
are full of tenderness and repose-of the ut-
most delicacy and elegance. Over the grace-
ful earth spreads the flowing green grass, uni-
form and universal. Above this stand the full,
swelling trunks-warm browns and pale grays
-often lichen-flecked or moss-enamelled. Over
these expand the vast domes and canopies of
leafage. And falling down upon these comes
the placid sunshine through a sky of cerulean
blueness, and past the snowy zones of gleaming
cloud. The very individuality of the tree comes
out as it never can in denser places. Always
the most truly human object in still, voiceless
                     13

 









        The Blue-Grass Region

nature, it here throws out its arms to you with
imploring tenderness, with what Wadsworth
called "the soft eye - music of slow - waving
boughs." One cannot travel far in the blue-
grass country without coming upon one of these
woodland strips.
  Of the artistic service rendered the landscape
of this region by other elements of scenery-
atmosphere and cloud and sky-much might,
but little will, be said. The atmosphere is
sometimes crystalline, sometimes full of that
intense repose of dazzling light which one, with-
out ever having seen them, knows to be on can-
vases of Turner. Then, again, it is amber-hued,
or tinged with soft blue, graduated to purple
shadows on the horizon. During the greater
part of the year the cloud-sky is one of strongly
outlined forms; the great white cumuli drift
over, with every majesty of design and grace
of grouping; but there come, in milder seasons,
many days when one may see three cloud belts
in the heavens at the same time, the lowest far,
far away, and the highest brushing softly, as it
were, past the very dome of the inviolable blue.
You turn your eye downward to see the light
wandering wistfully among the low distant
hills, and the sweet tremulous shadows cross-
ing the meadows with timid cadences. It is a
beautiful country; the Kentucky skies are not
                    '4



 
































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        The Blue-Grass Region

the cold, hard, brilliant, hideous things that so
many writers on nature style American skies
(usually meaning New England skies), as con-
trasted with skies European. They are at times
ineffably warm in tone and tender in hue, giv-
ing aerial distances magical and fathomless
above, and throwing down upon the varied soft
harmonious greens of the landscape below, upon
its rich browns and weathered grays and whole
scheme of terrene colors, a flood of radiance as
bountiful and transfiguring as it is chastened
and benign.
  But why make a description of the blue-grass
region of Kentucky What one sees may be
only what one feels-only intricate affinities
between nature and self that were developed
long ago, and have become too deep to be view-
ed as relations or illusions. What two human
beings find the same things in the face of a
third, or in nature's Descriptions of scenery
are notoriously disappointing to those whose
taste in landscape is different, or who have lit-
tle or no sentiment for pure landscape beauty.
So one coming hither might be sorely disap-
pointed. No mountains; no strips of distant
blue gleaming water nor lawny cascades; no
grandeur; no majesty; no wild picturesque-
ness. The chords of landscape harmony are
very simple; nothing but softness and amenity,
                    I5

 








        The Blue-Grass Region

grace and repose, delicacy and elegance. One
might fail at seasons to find even these. This
is a beautiful country, but not always; there
come days when the climate shows as ugly a
temper as possible. Not a little of the finest
timber has been lost by storms. The sky is for
days one great blanket of grewsome gray. In
winter you laugh with chattering teeth at those
who call this "the South," the thermometer
perhaps registering from twelve to fifteen de-
grees below zero. In summer the name is but
a half-truth. Only by visiting this region dur-
ing some lovely season, or by dwelling here
from year to year, and seeing it in all the humors
of storm and sunshine, can one love it.



 

















III



BUT the ideal landscape of daily life must
      not be merely beautiful: it should be
      useful. With what may not the fertility
of this region be compared With the valleys
of the Schuylkill, the Shenandoah, and the
Genesee; with the richest lands of Lombardy
and Belgium; with the most fertile districts
of England. The evidences of this fertility
are everywhere. Nature, even in those places
where she has been forced for nearly a hun-
dred years to bear muLch at the hands of a not
always judicious agriculture, unceasingly strug-
gles to cover herself with bushes of all sorts
and nameless annual weeds and grasses. Even
the blue-grass contends in vain for complete
possession of its freehold. One is forced to
note, even though without sentiment, the rich
pageant of transitory wild bloom that will
force a passage for itself over the landscape:
firmaments of golden dandelions in the lawns;
vast beds of violets, gray and blue, in dim
   B                17

 









        The Blue -Grass Region

glades; patches of flaunting sunflowers along
the road-sides; purple thistles; and, of deeper
purple still and far denser growth, beautiful
ironweed in the woods; with many clumps
of alder bloom, and fast-extending patches of
perennial blackberry, and groups of delicate
May - apples, and whole fields of dog - fennel
and goldenrod. And why mention indomitable
dock and gigantic poke, burrs and plenteous
nightshade, and mullein and plantain, with
dusty gray - green ragweed and thrifty fox-
tail-an innumerable company.
  Maize, pumpkins, and beans grow together
in a field-a triple crop. Nature perfects them
all, yet must do more. Scarce have the ploughs
left the furrows before there springs up a varied
wild growth, and a fourth crop, morning-glo-
ries, festoon the tall tassels of the Indian-corn
ere the knife can be laid against the stalk.
Harvest fields usually have their stubble well
hidden by a rich, deep aftermath. Garden
patches, for all that hoe and rake can do, com-
monly look at last like spots given over to
weeds and grasses. Sidewalks quickly lose their
borders. Pavements would soon disappear from
sight; the winding of a distant stream through
the fields can be readily followed by the line
of vegetation that rushes there to fight for
life, from the minutest creeping vines to forest
                     I8



 


























































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        The Blue-Grass Region

trees. Every neglected fence corner becomes
an area for a fresh colony. Leave one of these
sweet, humanized woodland pastures alone for
a shore period of years, it runs wild with a
dense young natural forest; vines shoot up to
the tops of the tallest trees, and then tumble
over in green sprays on the heads of others.
  A kind, true, patient, self-helpful soil if ever
there was one! Some of these lands after be-
ing cultivated, not always scientifically, but
always without artificial fertilizers, for more
than three-quarters of a century, are now, if
properly treated, equal in productiveness to
the best farming lands of England. The
farmer from one of these old fields will take
two different crops in a season. He gets two
cuttings of clover from a meadow, and has rich
grazing left. A few counties have at a time
produced three - fourths of the entire hemp
product of the United States. The State itself
has at different times stood first in wheat and
hemp and Indian-corn and wool and tobacco
and flax, although half its territory is covered
with virgin forests. When lands under im-
proper treatment have become impoverished,
their productiveness has been restored, not by
artificial fertilizers, but by simple rotation of
crops, with nature's help. The soil rests on
decomposable limestone, which annually gives
                     '9

 








         The Blue-Grass Region

 up to it in solution all the essential mineral
 plant food that judicious agriculture needs.
   Soil and air and climate-the entire aggre-
gate of influences happily co-operative-make
the finest grazing. The Kentucky horse has
carried the reputation of the country into
regions where even the people could never
have made it known. Your expert in the
breeding of thoroughbreds will tell you that
the muscular fibre of the blue-grass animal is
to that of the Pennsylvania-bred horses as silk
to cotton, and the texture of his bone, com-
pared with the latter's, as ivory beside pumice-
stone.  If taken to the Eastern States, in
twelve generations he is no longer the same
breed of horse. His blood fertilizes American
stock the continent over. Jersey cattle brought
here increase in size. Sires come to Kentucky
to make themselves and their offspring fa-
mous.
  The people themselves are a fecund race.
Out of this State have gone more to enrich
the citizenship of the nation than all the other
States together have been able to send into it.
So at least your loyal-hearted Kentuckian looks
at the rather delicate subject of inter - State
migration. By actual measurement the Ken-
tucky volunteers during the Civil War were
found to surpass all others (except Tennessee-
                     20

 








        The Blue - Grass Region

ans) in height and weight, whether coming
from the United States or various countries
of Europe. But for the great-headed Scandi-
navians, they would have been first, also, in
circumference around the forehead and occi-
put. Still, Kentucky has little or no litera-
ture.
  One element that should be conspicuous in
fertile countries does not strike the observer
here-much beautiful water; no other State
has a frontage of navigable rivers equal to that
of Kentucky. But there are few limpid, lovely,
smaller streams. Wonderful springs there are,
and vast stores of water in the cavernous earth
below; but the landscape lacks the charm of
this element-clear, rushing, musical, abundant.
The watercourses, ever winding and graceful,
are apt to be either swollen and turbid or in-
significant; of late years the beds seem less
full also-a change consequent, perhaps, upon
the denudation of forest lands. In a dry sea-
son the historic Elkhorn seems little more than
a ganglion of precarious pools.



 

















Iv



T    HE best artists who have painted culti-
       vated ground have always been very
       careful to limit the area of the crops.
Undoubtedly the substitution of a more scien-
tific agriculture for the loose and easy ways of
primitive husbandry has changed the key-note
of rural existence from a tender Virgilian sen-
timent to a coarser strain, and as life becomes
more unsophisticated it grows less picturesque.
When the work of the old-time reaper is done
by a fat man with a flaming face, sitting on a
cast-iron machine, and smoking a cob pipe, the
artist will leave the fields. Figures have a ter-
rible power to destroy sentiment in pure land-
scape; so have houses. When one leaves nature,
pure and simple, in the blue-grass country, he
must accordingly pick his way circumspectly
or go amiss in his search for the beautiful. If
his taste lead him to desire in landscapes the
finest evidences of human labor, the high arti-
ficial finish of a minutely careful civilization,
                    22

 









        The Blue - Grass Region

he will here find great disappointment. On the
other hand, if he delight in those exquisite rural
spots of the Old World with picturesque bits of
homestead architecture and the perfection of
horticultural and unobtrusive botanical details,
he will be no less aggrieved. What he sees
here is neither the most scientific farming,
simply economic and utilitarian-raw and rude
-nor that cultivated desire for the elements in
nature to be so moulded by the hand of man
that they will fuse harmoniously and inextri-
cably with his habitations and his work.
  The whole face of the country is taken up by
a succession of farms. Each of these, except
the very small ones, presents to the eye the
variation of meadow, field, and woodland past-
ure, together with the homestead and the sur-
rounding grounds of orchard, garden, and lawn.
The entire landscape is thus caught in a vast
net-work of fences. The Kentuckian retains
his English ancestors' love of enclosures; but
the uncertain tenure of estates beyond a single
generation does not encourage him to make
them the most durable. One does, indeed,
notice here and there throughout the country
stone-walls of blue limestone, that give an as-
pect of substantial repose and comfortable firm-
ness to the scenery. But the farmer dreads
their costliness, even though his own hill-sides
                     23

 









        The Blue-Grass Region

furnish him an abundant quarry. He knows
that unless the foundations are laid like those
of a house, the thawing earth will unsettle them,
that water, freezing as it trickles through the
crevices, will force the stones out of their places,
and that breaches will be made in them by boys
on a hunt whenever and wherever it shall be
necessary to get at a lurking or sorely pressed
hare. It is ludicrously true that the most ter-
rible destroyer of stone-walls in this country is
the small boy hunting a hare, with an appe-
tite for game that knows no geological impedi-
ment. Therefore one hears of fewer limestone
fences of late years, some being torn down and
superseded by plank fences or post-and-rail
fences, or by the newer barbed-wire fence-an
economic device that will probably become as
popular in regions where stone and timber were
never to be had as in others, like this, where
timber has been ignorantly, wantonly sacrificed.
It is a pleasure to know that one of the most
expensive, and certainly the most hideous,
fences ever in vogue here is falling into disuse.
I mean the worm-fence-called worm because
it wriggled over the landscape like a long brown
caterpillar, the stakes being the bristles along
its back, and because it now and then ate up a
noble walnut-tree close by, or a kingly oak, or
frightened, trembling ash-a worm that decided
                    24

 









        The Blue-Grass Region

the destiny of forests. A pleasure it is, too, to
come occasionally upon an Osage orange hedge-
row, which is a green eternal fence. But you
will not find many of these. It is generally too
much to ask of an American, even though he
be a Kentuckian, to wait for a hedge to grow
and make him a fence. When he takes a notion
to have a fence, he wants it put up before Sat-
urday night.
  If the Kentuckian, like the Englishman, is
fond of fencing himself off, like the Frenchman,
he loves long, straight roads. You will not
find elsewhere in America such highways as
the Kentuckian has constructed over his coun-
try - broad, smooth, level, white, glistening
turnpikes of macadamized limestone. It is a
luxury to drive, and also an expense, as one
will discover before one has passed through
many toll - gates. One could travel more
cheaply on the finest railway on