Southern Mountaineers - May 2, 1901

Scribner’s Magazine has had a series of articles lately on the Southern Mountaineers by John Fox, Jr. We are not treated therein as people, just mountaineers, and we are overcome with regret that when John Fox, Jr. was traveling in West Virginia and Kentucky we did not barbecue him and have a roast instead of letting him except to New York and write us up in the magazines.

Probably one of the most serious crimes he is guilty of is that he dares to localize an anecdote. A friend of his was traveling in the Cumberland Mountains and asked his hostess: “Are there any Episcopalians around here?” To which she replies: “Well, now I can’t say, but John has killed a good many varmints this winter. You might look at their skins, if you was a mind to.”

This antecdote first appeared in print in Davy Crickett’s time. Fox appropriates it and gives it to Scribner’s in April, 1901, not as a joke but to show that the Southern mountaineer is not familiar with long words, like Episcopalian.

All our folks have agreed from time immemorial that woman had a fine sense of the ridiculous and that man had about as much sense as a fishing worm.