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It was returned in kind, however, when a neighbor's necessities required. These log-rollings were generally accompanied with a quilting, which brought together the youth of the neighborhood; and the winding up of the day's work was a frolic, as the dance and other amusements of the time were termed.

Back in the mountains in the days of William York, there were other forms of amusement than the shooting-matches. The "log-rollings," the "house-raisings," which always ended in a feast or barbecue, continued popular with the people. And they had "corn-huskings," to which all the neighbors came. The "corn-husking" was a winter sport.

Only, where they had lived he had been born in a log cabin. Their weapons the axe and the rifle had been his. He had had the same fight with Nature as they. He knew as well as they what life in the woods in "a half-faced camp" was. Their rude sports and pastimes, their log-rollings, house-raisings, quilting parties, corn-huskings, feats of strength, had been his.

He struck communities where the medium of exchange was still barter, and he found mountaineers drinking metheglin still as well as moonshine. Moreover, there were still log-rollings, house-warmings, corn-shuckings, and quilting parties, and sports were the same as in pioneer days wrestling, racing, jumping, and lifting barrels.

The customary social gatherings were at horse-racings, at corn-shuckings, at political speech-makings, at weddings, whereat the coarse proceedings would not nowadays bear recital; at log-rollings, where the neighbors gathered to collect the logs of a newly cleared lot for burning; and at house-raisings, where they kindly aided to set up the frame of a cabin for a new-comer; at camp-meetings, where the hysterical excitement of a community whose religion was more than half superstition found clamorous and painful vent; or perchance at a hanging, which, if it met public approbation, would be sanctioned by the gathering of the neighbors within a day's journey of the scene.

Corn-shuckings, apple-parings, log-rollings, sugaring-off all these tasks even down to "hog-killings" were made the excuse for social gatherings. The idea of helping one another in the heavier tasks of their existence on the frontier was likewise combined in this.

They held shooting-matches on the mountainside, enjoyed "log-rollings" and "corn-huskings." Strong in their loves and in their hates, they feared God, but feared no man. The Civil War swept over the valley and left splotches of blood.

Many were the opportunities that served to bring together the frontiersmen, with their families, throughout a settlement or county. Foremost among such occasions were the log-rollings. After a settler had felled the thick-growing trees on a plot which he desired to prepare for cultivation, he cut them, either by sawing or by burning, into logs twelve or fifteen feet in length.

At log-rollings, quiltings, and Saturday-night frolics, he was the first and the most admired.

Log-rollings, house-raisings, house-warmings, corn-shuckings, quiltings, and the like were occasions when all the neighbors came together to do what the family itself could hardly accomplish alone.