Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/34

 1 8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The aesthetic impulses of the mountaineers have already been hinted at. The dress of the men has almost no suggestion of tidiness, to say nothing of taste. It was not unusual to find relatively well-to-do citizens going about in worn or tattered garments. The storekeepers, lawyers, and doctors were the only exception, and many of them had a shabby look. The women, on the other hand, especially the younger of them, show an art feeling in their linsey dresses of bright patterns, their ruffled white and pink sun bonnets, and bits of bright rib- bon at their throats. Their shoes, however, are in many cases very large and coarse, and obtruded themselves painfully from beneath the linsey gowns. The older women seem to care much less for appearances. They have a worn and faded look, the inevitable result of years of child-bearing and unremitting work over the blazing fire, at the loom, and, it may be, in the field.

The interest of these people in theology and church organ- ization is keen. The "meeting" offers an opportunity for sociability hardly second to the singing school and the frolic. One Sunday evening, in the courthouse of a small town, we heard a traveling evangelist, at the close of an earnest sermon, beg the people to go quietly to their homes and not to stop and "visit" as they usually did. We could infer from this how impor- tant a function of sociability the church renders among these folk.

Theological discussion satisfies the appetite for metaphysics, and offers opportunity for intellectual exercise and discipline. Along with this fondness for theological dogma, we found traces of a tradition of folk-lore and superstition which seemed to offer an inviting field of study to the student of folk-psy- chology.

The moral standards of the mountaineers have been modified in a marked way of late. Probably in popular thought the chief associations with the mountains are "moonshine" and feuds. It was something of a surprise to us to learn that all three of the counties through which we rode had adopted a no- license policy, and that for a considerable period a regular feud or "war" had not been known. Nor was this change chiefly the