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Most mountaineers are indulgent, super-indulgent parents. The oft-heard threat "I'll w'ar ye out with a hick'ry!" is seldom carried out. The boys, especially, grow up with little restraint beyond their own natural sense of filial duty.
Nan played draughts with her uncle and fox and geese and the other kindergarten game with her big cousins. To see Tom, with his eyes screwed up tight and the pencil poised in his blunt, frost-cracked fingers over the slate, while he recited in a base sing-song: "Hick'ry, dick'ry, dock The mouse ran up the clock, The clock struck one, An' down he come Hick'ry, dick'ry, dock," was side-splitting.
See 'em in action first, say I. There was a corn-fed hussy in a plush bonnet with forget-me-nots, two hundred and thirty or forty on the hoof, that exhausted my vitality all right no holds barred, an arm like first-growth hick'ry across my windpipe, and me up against a solid pillar of structural ironwork!
She put me in a hick'ry basket when I on'y a day and a half old, with nuthin' on but mah belly band an' di'per. Took me down in de cotton patch an' sot de basket on a stump in de bilin sun. Didn't want me, 'cause I be black. All de otha youngins o' hers be bright.
"You wuz moughty good ter me," muttered free Levi, shuffling his bare feet in the long grass, "en Marse Dan, he wuz moughty good ter me, too, 'fo' he went away on dat black night. Yes, Lawd, I did, but I warn' countin' on Marse Dan. He warn' mo'n wais' high ter ole Rainy-day, but de furs' thing I know dar wuz ole Rainy-day on de yerth wid Marse Dan a-lashin' 'im wid de branch er hick'ry."
You don't know what hobble rods is!!! Ain't you seen these here long thin hick'ry shoots? They called hobble rods. I don't know why they called 'em hobble rods. I know they made you hobble. They'd put 'em in the fire and roast 'em and twist 'em. I have seen 'em whip them till the blood run down their backs.
"No, no, men," said the old warrior quickly. "I am not General Lee. But I have led Southern troops before. I was at New Orleans. I was " "It's Ole Hick'ry by the eternal! Ole Hick'ry and he's come back to life to lead us!" shouted a big fellow as he threw his hat in the air. "Ole Hickory!
Soon the ground was littered with these hulls, while the big buckskin bag was filled with the clean nuts. Then, lifting it to his shoulder, Paul marched off proudly to the house. "Now, why didn't I think uv that?" said Jim Hart, as Paul threw down the bag before him and disclosed its contents. "An' all them hick'ry nuts jest layin' thar on the ground an' waitin' fur me."
"Dat a calp cry, Massa Henry see he dere a canoe not bigger nor a hick'ry nut," and he pointed with his finger to what in fact had the appearance of being little larger; "I wish," he pursued with bitterness, "dey bring him calp of dem billians Desborough Dam him lying tief to hell." "So help me hebben, Obbicer, he no sail around a gun boat, he dam a Yankee.
"But all dem things I done tol' you ain' nuffin 'side'n de change w'at come ober Mars Jeems fum dat time on. Aun' Peggy's goopher had made a noo man un 'im enti'ely. De nex' day atter he come back, he tol' de han's dey neenter wuk on'y fum sun ter sun, en he cut dey tasks down so dey did n' nobody hab ter stan' ober 'em wid a rawhide er a hick'ry.
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