WHEN you see little groups of people assembled at the houses or moving from place to place, the men newly shaven, the women and children dressed in their best, you may know it is Sunday. When there is no church, everybody goes visiting, and one should think from the numbers collected in the dooryards of some of the houses that these visitations must strain the capacity of the bean-pot considerably. For whoever comes must be invited to dinner.

If it is "preaching-day" the people are found all moving towards one point, the settlement church, which, like the school-house, generally stands " at a point equally inconvenient for everybody." In the villages and larger settlements, the minister is resident, and the churches are like other country churches, but outside the villages, services are conducted in the barnlike little "church-houses" by an itinerant preacher, the frequency of whose visits depends upon the size of his parish and the distances he has to travel. Hence it happens that upon the death of a person in a remote district, although the actual "burying" takes place at once, one may be invited weeks or months or even a year or more afterward to attend the "funeral," a very important ceremony which is frequently deferred until the presence of some favorite preacher is obtainable, and to which come friends and relatives from far and near.

The itinerant preacher is nearly always a native who has very little more "book-larnin"' than the rest of the people, and who may be seen in the field on week days ploughing with his " ole mule" exactly like his neighbors. He chooses his calling because of his natural gifts, his reward oftentimes being the opportunity to exercise his talents. Once, asking the wife of a hardworking farmer preacher how much he got for his arduous Sunday services, sometimes requiring him to start the day before, the astonishing reply was, "Oh, he don't get nothing. He says it takes them as long to come and hear him as it takes him to preach, and the least he can do, if they take the trouble to come, is to preach to them." A novel and refreshing view of pastoral duty in these days.

The people as a rule are Baptists, though there are a few Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian centres which are rapidly enlarging, but the religion of the mountains may be said to take naturally the Baptist form, and when you see a crowd down on the riverbank some Sunday, you may be sure there is a "baptizing" going on.

The people are devout and good church-goers, but the old-time native preacher knows how to preach nothing but doctrine, he produces emotional effect by intonation and the frequent introduction of a long-drawn and hysterical "ah" -thus, "Oh, Lord - ah be - ah - merciful - ah - to these thy - ah - children ah," and so it goes, with increasing intensity for an hour or more. The effect of this must be heard to be appreciated. To preach less than an hour, no matter how much or what may be said, is a sign of incompetency.

On "preaching-Sunday" the people conscientiously go to church, however distant it may be, but the prayer-meetings introduced by newcomers have slight attendance. " I reckon they're clar plumb dilatory," the Baptist minister's wife, who washed clothes for summer visitors, explained of her neighbors who could not be induced to attend a mid-week meeting.

Besides the orthodox Baptists, there are various offshoots, such as the " Washfoot Babdists," and very popular just now, the "Wholly Sanctified," the mystic meaning of whose doctrine, being literally interpreted by some erring brethren, is a cause of much trouble both to the defenders of the faith and the community at large. Under the Smoky Mountain we heard of a sect of "Barkers," who, the people said, in their religious frenzy run and bark up a tree in the belief that Christ is there.

The mountain school, like the mountain church, varies with the locality, out in the country resembling the barnlike church-house, only being smaller and, until very recently, built of logs. It sometimes stands in the lonely forest so far from any one that finding the school-house seems to be the child's first step to an education, the second step being to acquire learning in spite of the opportunities offered. The log school-house was picturesque in the extreme, but as an educational institution it lacked many things. Sometimes it lacked windows, relying upon the cracks between the logs and the open door for light and ventilation. Its furnishing consisted of benches, and a chair for the teacher, while the books were few and as antiquated as the furniture. The condition of the school-house in the remoter regions, oftentimes did not greatly interest the people. Once upon protesting against a school-house with no windows, the father of several of the children in attendance replied that the children's eyes were strong and it did them no harm to learn their lessons in the dark.

" Book-larnin"' evidently is not the thing that most absorbs the remote mountaineer's waking hours. He takes his children's schooling as he takes their measles, not very seriously. A few parents are anxious to have their children educated, the rest are indifferent, not quite comprehending what good can come to the children from something they themselves have had so little use for. Nor can one blame those parents who prefer to keep the children at home rather than send them miles, it may be, through the forest and over rushing streams, to the schoolhouse where school "takes up"for only a few weeks in the year, and where the teacher, like the rest of the people, knows little more than how to be kind. The advantages of such schooling are apparent, and one wonders whether that father were more a philosopher or a humorist who, being condoled with because the school was so far away, "reckoned" it was just as well because the children were therefore better contented to stay at home. Another parent, philosophizing upon the questionable advantages of " book-larnin"' for his children, ended with the optimistic assertion, "Well, I reckon it don't hurt 'em noway - they so soon fergit it all." And the woman who said contentedly, " I can't neither read nor write, but I don't need to, for God has given me a pretty wit," summed up the ancient philosophy of a large part of the mountains.

Passing a roadside school-house at "recess" time, one is astonished at the number of children crowding about the building. The forest may seem like an uninhabited wilderness, yet there are children enough to supply a small village. And even at the school-house far from the road, and hidden so well that it is cause for wonder that the children ever find it, one has seen them come darting out of the forest like rabbits, barefooted and sunbonneted, carrying such books as they had, and swinging their "dinner buckets" -lard pails most of them. If you expect to find these young backwoodsmen as shy as quails and overcome at the unprecedented appearance of strangers in their midst, you will be mistaken. They are not shy, and they are not bold, these children of the forest of Arden. They are glad to see you, and show it in smiles as broad as nature has made provision for. You feel that if you stayed a little longer they would all invite you to go home with them.

There is no truant officer in the mountains, and no need of one. The children love to go to school and go so long as there is a school day left, unless circumstances in the form of younger brothers and sisters and the stern hand of parental control forbid. Perhaps their devotion is partly accounted for in the length of the school year, which lasts from six weeks, to three or four months. You do not have time to get tired of going to a school that lasts only six weeks with forty-six weeks of vacation to look forward to.

The log school-house is fast vanishing from the North Carolina mountains where so many changes have been made within a few years. And while the schools hidden in the heart of the wilderness are undoubtedly still primitive enough to compete with any of the noted log schools that nurtured genius in former days, genius is not nurtured in them here, for it can quickly find its way to the better schools of the villages that are becoming more and more accessible. Indeed, educational opportunities are increasing on all sides at the same quick pace that characterizes the other "improvements" that are now transforming the wilderness into something else, though it must not be supposed that there is yet no room for improvement.

There are schools for higher education, colleges and industrial schools, in the mountains themselves, as well as in the country just below the mountains, and now a law has been passed which retires the unlettered mountain girl as a teacher in favor of the one who can show a normal school certificate, there being three normal schools in the mountains, as well as normal departments in other mountain institutions. The school-houses are being rebuilt, and even now the last log school-house may have closed its doors forever on the youth of the North Carolina mountains.

Ten years ago statistics of illiteracy in these mountains were almost startling. It was calculated that there was a school attendance of only about one third of the children of school age, while the condition of the buildings, the quality of the teaching, and the length of the school year in the country districts were such as to leave those who attended school little better instructed than those who did not. Since that time much has been done to wake up the people to the value of education, as well as in providing means to such an end, but necessarily there yet remains a large army of mountain people who can neither read nor write.

The older educational institutions are of course in or near Asheville, and these have steadily bettered their equipment with the passing of time. Now all through the mountains one finds the established village schools increasing in efficiency and new schools being started. Among the educational institutions none give better promise than the industrial schools that have sprung up here and there within recent years. The churches are now as a rule putting forth their most earnest efforts in this direction, wisely seeking to do that which the regular educational institutions leave undone, and many earnest souls are devoting their powers to teaching the people how to live as well as how to think and believe.

Perhaps no better illustration of the struggles and conquests of these workers can be given than that of Brevard Institute, near Brevard, in the French Broad Valley. This school, started in 1895, through the self-sacrificing efforts of one man has struggled on, kept alive mainly by that internal heat which alone gives any institution real growth-power. To-day it enrolls nearly two hundred pupils, most of them girls, as the department for young men is not yet fully developed. Here come young people from all parts of the mountains and for a price within their means receive home, education, and training in the practical things of life. That the spirit in which the school was founded yet persists is felt the moment one enters its doors, when one becomes aware of such an atmosphere of love and helpfulness, from the principal down to the youngest pupil, that it is a pleasure to go there and bask in the warmth of it. Not that, even to-day, the equipment is anything like adequate to the needs, but the results prove that the poorest tools in loving hands can accomplish much.

Besides the ordinary academic subjects and special religious training, the pupils are here taught "a dread of debt, promptness in attending to business obligations of every sort, a love for thoroughness and accuracy in doing work of every sort, self-control in the expenditure of money, and a knowledge of simple business transactions." There is a business course, a department of music, one of domestic art where is taught dressmaking, millinery, and lacemaking, and a department of domestic science where the subjects taught are housework, cookery, laundry, and mending. In the normal department, "it is the intention to show young teachers how manual training, sand tables, dramatization, phonics, and so forth, can be introduced and profitably used even where there is no equipment." Thus young people are prepared to go home to the little mountain schools and there spread abroad the information and the ideals they have themselves received, as well as to go, if they are so inclined, into the world of action now opening below and in the mountains, and whose demands for helpers in all departments is in excess of a competent supply. Brevard Institute is but one among a number of industrial schools that are doing their part, against all sorts of difficulties, to help on the transformation that is so rapidly taking place in the Southern mountains.

Another form of practical education is well illustrated in the Allenstand Cottage Industries, which is settlement work carried on in remote, and what one might call side-tracked, districts. This work began, with a day school as a nucleus, in a cove in the mountains in the northwestern part of Buncombe County, long before the present wave of prosperity had drawn near to the mountains. Here the difficult question of how to bring to the people material help without spiritually hurting them was finally answered, we are told, by the gift from a well-to-do "neighbor woman" of a home-woven coverlet forty years old, slightly faded but still beautiful in its golden brown and cream hues.

This worn old coverlet became as it were a palimpsest whereon love deciphered the history of the past for the enlightenment of the present. Looms had almost disappeared, chemical dyes had replaced the oldtime vegetable dyes in coloring the "linsey cloth," still sometimes made, and the yarn spun for stockings. But the spinning-wheels were there and gave a clue by which the settlement workers ingeniously found their way out of the labyrinth. Wool from a neighboring valley was obtained and given out to be carded and spun by hand, then, in the words of one of the workers:

"The coloring was the next business, and it was a matter of time to learn from the older women the secrets of the indigo pot and of the coloring with barks and leaves. We learned that for the best results the indigo dye should be used before the wool was spun. Whence the old phrase `dyed in the wool.' The formula for a blue-pot demanded, besides the indigo, bran, madder, and lye, the ingredient of patience, till the pot, set beside the hearth to keep it at the right temperature, saw fit to `come.' Then the dipping of the wool began. For a deep blue this dipping must be repeated five or six times, and the pot `renewed up' betweentimes, as the strength of the color was exhausted. The coloring with madder was less of a circumstance. Gradually we learned of many other dyes, of leaves and barks and flowers, giving us a variety of soft hues - browns, yellows, greens, orange, and also an excellent black. The true green is obtained by dyeing first with a yellow dye and then dipping in the blue-pot, but a good olive green is given by using hickory bark with something to `set the dye.' Every year we gather the 'bay leaves' for the bright yellow, and harvest for winter use the `yellow dyeflower' growing on the high ridges.

" But to return to the beginnings. When yarn enough for three coverlets had been prepared, the next step was to find a weaver of the double draf t that is, of the coverlet material with shotover designs. This requires four sets of harness in the loom, instead of two as for plain cloth, and four treadles as well. The warp is `drawn in' and the weaving `tramped' according to a paper pattern which is pinned up on the front of the loom. A number of women in the cove knew well how to weave plain linsey and jeans, but no one could weave the coverlets. Sixteen miles away, and farther from the railroad, we found a family where mother and daughters had great store of spreads, old and new, to which they were continually adding. As they showed these treasures to us, the variety of design was bewildering. At last we chose two patterns, and the women undertook to weave-our yarn for us. It was an exciting moment when, two weeks later, our messenger returned carrying across his horse's back the long roll of weaving. Now came the question whether there was a market for such work. This was soon ascertained. Our first coverlets were sold in a few weeks, and the demand for more was enough to justify at least a small start in business. So an enterprising young woman near us volunteered to learn the double draft. A loom was found for sale in the `Ivy Country,' and hauled to us, more wool bought and more spinners set to work."

Thus started what has grown to be an important industry to that part of the mountains. From this cove one of the settlement workers pressed yet deeper into the wilderness, to the "Laurel Country," as all that region drained by tributaries of Big Laurel Creek is called. Here, away up on Little Laurel Creek, near the Tennessee line, almost due north from Hot Springs, and close under the wild Bald Mountains, at a place called Allenstand, the work was begun again. Once Allenstand was a stoppingplace on one of those early roads over which passed the traffic in cattle, sheep, horses, and swine from Tennessee to the eastern lowlands, and from this it got its name, a " stand " being a place where drovers stopped overnight with their charges, this particular one being kept by a man named Allen. Allenstand may have been prosperous in those days, but the tide of traffic becoming diverted, the people living there were left to primitive conditions until the coming of the woman who was to open the doors to them, for it is to one woman that the "Laurel Country" owes its prosperity. It is always the individual who divines and conquers the difficulties in an undertaking of this sort, and so signal has been the success of this inspired worker that she is known to the outside world as the " Bishop of the Laurel Country," for about Allenstand as a centre have sprung up a number of similar settlements at intervals of a few miles.

To the making of the more elaborate coverlets was added the simpler weaving of linsey which the country people themselves cannot afford to buy, it having become a luxury for dwellers in the outer world, to whom it offers itself, not only for outing wear, but also as suitable material for tailor-made gowns! Also floor rugs were made, as well as rag rugs for which the colors are chosen and blended with very pleasing results. Indeed, there is work done and experiments constantly being made in various kinds of weaving and embroidering, as well as in basket-work and simple wood-carving. And there is now a room at Asheville where the products of this settlement are on sale.

Younger than Allenstand, and more remarkable as an illustration of the possibilities of the mountaineer for a high type of development, is the industrial school at Biltmore. Here the rector of All Souls', the Biltmore church, recognizing the needs of the people, secured the services of two women gifted with the genius necessary to carry such a work to perfection, and who in ten years' time have developed to its present remarkable point what is known as the "Biltmore Industries," the history of which is as interesting as a story. The school was designed to meet the needs of the people connected with the Biltmore estate, and the enthusiastic founders started with four boys, the first one of whom had to be paid to come! To-day some of those who first entered are carving chairs for the great establishment of Tiffany of New York, and more than one hundred of the pupils are earning a livelihood by their woodcarving craft. One young man, upon becoming engaged to be married, made for his future home a whole set of beautiful Chippendale furniture. The workers are paid from the moment they begin, and the older ones are not only self-supporting, but they are technically and artistically educated to the enjoyment of a kind of life which otherwise they could neither have attained nor appreciated.

Woodcarving is not the only work done at the Biltmore Industries, as witness the rolls of cloth lying on the table of the industrial rooms, cloth woven by the women in their own looms and colored by natural plant dyes. There is also embroidery, beautiful in color, design, and workmanship, and the girls, after some diplomatic manoeuvres to overcome the opposition of the militant sex, now also carve. Thus in the embroidery, carving, and weaving the women, like the men, are getting far more than pay for their work. One of the pleasures of going to Biltmore is a visit to the rooms of the Industries where the work of the people is shown and explained.