George Cary Eggleston

“ I'm going to share and share alike with you my comrades. I am not yet very strong after my long illness, but I'm strong enough to stay awake for my fair share of the time, and you may be sure I am strong enough to pull a trigger and empty fourteen bullets from my magazine rifle into any body that may venture to assail us. Now boys, I want you to understand my position and attitude clearly. Either I am a full member of this company in good standing, or else I do not belong to it at all. In the latter case I'll withdraw and go back down the mountain. ”

“ A man may sleep well on a heavy meal, but often he gets up with a bad taste in his mouth and with a morbid craving for food, which means that he hasn't properly assimilated the food that he has already eaten."
"What do you mean by 'assimilating' food?" asked Tom, adding: "I'm afraid you'll think me very ignorant."
"Not at all," replied the Doctor. "Most people don't understand that. You see, there are two distinct processes by which we turn food to account in building up our bodies, making strength and heat, and generally carrying on the processes of life. ”

“ You see men that are freest in killing other men have no more fondness than people generally for being killed themselves. Desperadoes are not heroes. They are merely bullies who take advantage of an unarmed enemy when they can and sneak away as that man did whenever an enemy 'gits the drap' on them as the fellow phrased it."
"But won't they attack us in our camp?" asked Jim Chenowith.
"Probably," answered Jack with perfect calmness. "They want us out of the mountains and they'll probably try to drive us out. ”

“ Tom felt in his pocket, drew out a handkerchief and tied it to the end of his gun. Then he descended the little ladder to the ground.
"What are you going to do Tom?" asked Jack.
"Why, I'm going out under a flag of truce to explain to those fellows what a stupid blunder they've made. They've mistaken Camp Venture for an illicit distillery, as if anybody would set up a still in such an open place as this."
"But wait, Tom! It is still so dark that they may not see your flag of truce. They may all fire at you at once. Wait till broad daylight comes." ”

“ I move that the Doctor take charge of such provisions as are left to us, with full power, to dole them out in the best way to keep life in us till the conditions change."
"Good!" cried all the boys in chorus, and so the motion was carried.
"If worse comes to worst," said Tom, "I'll take my gun, break my way out of here, and kill something fit to eat, at whatever risk. The game of every sort is starving now as well as we are. The turkeys, deer, rabbits and all the rest of them will be out on the mountains hunting for something to eat on those spots that the wind has blown clear of snow. ”

“ It isn't a pleasant thing to kill a man, even when you've got to do it in self defence. So as I knew by his groans that he was worse hurt than I was, I didn't say anything about what his bullet had done till you were through with the job of dressing his wounds."
"Will you permit me to remark," said the Doctor, "quite casually and in parentheses as it were, that you, Ed Parmly, are a hero? I haven't met a great many heroes in my time, but you are one of the few. ”

“ With the instinct of his science the Doctor had no thought of questioning the wounded moonshiner. But Tom had no scientific training and no particular scruples concerning the matter. So he turned to the mountaineer, who was occupying his bed, and asked in a peremptory voice:
"Why did you shoot Ed? What harm had he done you? What right had you to shoot at him."
"Well, you see," said the mountaineer, taking up the familiar parable, "we fellers what lives up here in the mountings can't afford to have no intruders around. You fellers is intruders, and we're agoin' to drive you out'n the mountings. ”

“ I tell you, boys, there is nothing in this world that can happen to a man that is so good as being born an American citizen."
"Amen!" said Tom. "To employ the dialect of my friends among the mountaineers, 'them's my sentiments every time all over and clear through.'"
"All right," said Jack, "now let's get to bed."
"I suppose there's a lot more you could tell us about coal, Doctor," said Jim, "if there was time."
"Of course there is," the Doctor responded; "but you'll learn it all practically. For we've a great mine here, and you boys will have first choice of places in its management." ”

“ No, there's no such thing as accident in a world that is governed by law."
"But Tom," asked Jim Chenowith, "suppose you are on a railroad train and it runs off the track and you are considerably done up. Isn't that an accident?"
"No. The train would never have run off the track if everybody had done his duty. But somebody laid the rails carelessly, or some engineer failed to discover that a stone was loose on the cliff above and about to drop down on the track, or somebody else failed somewhere; otherwise the train would never have run off the track. ”

“ All we've got to do is to dig trenches on each side of our coal car tracks and let the water run out by force of gravitation. I tell you boys, we've discovered the most valuable coal mine in all this region, and as if to make matters still better, it lies just high enough up the mountain to enable us to chute its product down to the railroad without any expense whatever for hauling. ”

“ What we do in making coke is chiefly to expel the gas from the coal and to roast out the sulphur, which seriously interferes with the making of sufficient heat to smelt iron. Some coal gets burnt up in the process; some makes an indifferent and nearly worthless coke; while some makes a coke that would melt the heart of a miser. Now, as I told you the other night, I am convinced as a geologist, that a little further in our mine we shall come to coal so free from sulphur that we can smelt iron with it without making coke of it at all. ”

“ Nature itself," he added, "will repair any wound that does not involve a vital part, if it is cleansed and kept clean. The danger always is that the wound will become infected, that inflammation and blood poisoning will set in and kill the patient. Fortunately, we surgeons know now how to prevent that, and I'll answer for it that nothing of the kind shall happen to little Tom."
"But what is it that causes the inflammation and blood poisoning?" asked Harry.
"Microbes," answered the Doctor; "little things that you can't see without a microscope—and some that you can't see with one. ”

“ It does a man no good whatever to digest his food if he doesn't assimilate it. No matter how perfectly the stomach does its work, the body is not nourished unless the organs charged with the function of assimilating the digested food do theirs also. Once, in a hospital, I saw a little baby die of actual starvation, although it had an abundance of food, and digested it perfectly. It simply could not assimilate."
"But what has that to do with our going to bed at two o'clock in the morning?" asked Jack, who was disposed to be a trifle cross as the result of the long starvation and strain. ”

“ So long as they have corn pones or anything else to distend their stomachs with, they simply will not exert themselves to get anything better. They won't even go out and shoot a rabbit if they've got anything else to eat. You simply can't conceive of their poverty or of the indolence that produces it. If one of them owned a hog he'd kill it without taking the trouble to fatten it, and he'd eat it to the picking of the last bone before he would exert himself to procure another morsel of food."
"When was it, Tom, that you learned all this?" asked Harry. ”

“ The little energy they have is expended in making illicit whiskey and sneaking it down the mountain without getting caught. Many of them have already served long terms in prison, but they regard that merely as a manifestation of the law's injustice, just as they do the hanging of one of their number now and then, when he is caught shooting an agent of the revenue. They don't understand. They are as ignorant as they are poor, and their poverty exceeds anything that it is possible for us to conceive. ”

“ If the disabled steamer needs anything the other furnishes it. If she is too far broken down in her machinery to repair it at sea, the other will generally take her in tow. If she is likely to sink—the most unlikely of all things—the other will take off her crew and passengers and leave the ship to her fate."
"Why do you say, Doctor, that sinking is the most unlikely of all things?" asked Jack. "I should think it the most likely."
"Not at all," the Doctor replied. "The modern steamship is perhaps the most perfect product we have of scientific precision in construction. ”

“ There are few worse diseases than scurvy, and we boys must protect ourselves against it by every means in our power. It threatens us with a much more serious danger than any that the moonshiners can bring upon us."
"By the way," said Jack, "the moonshiners seem to be letting us alone now. Perhaps they have given us up as a bad job."
"That's just what they want us to think," responded Tom. "They are lying low, in the hope that we'll accept precisely that idea and relax our vigilance. That is the one thing that we mustn't do on any account. ”

“ Obviously, also, he was incapable, as his comrades were, of seeing that anybody but themselves had a right to stay in the mountains when they objected.
But Tom was bent upon carrying out his idea of taking the man down the mountain and bringing him to trial for shooting Ed, and the other boys fully sanctioned it.
"It may teach these people," said Jack, "that there are other people in the world who have rights. That will be a civilizing lesson."
"Yes," said Tom, "and besides that, it will lock up a man who seems to know how to shoot straight even in the dark. ”

“ Now ours is an industrial age and coal lies at the very root of productive industry. Without it we can't make steam or get power enough for any of the vast enterprises of modern civilization. It smelts iron out of rocks that would not give it up without King Coal's command. It enables us to make steel and to fashion metals to answer our requirements in a thousand ways. ”

“ Jefferson simply formulated the thought of all of them when he contended that the British parliament had no more right to pass laws for the government and taxation of Virginia than the Virginia legislature had to pass laws for the government and taxation of Great Britain. But the beauty of the whole thing lies in the fact that these great truths, asserted by the Americans in justification of their rebellion, have been fastened upon the minds of men everywhere, and all civilized governments have been compelled to accept and submit to them. ”

“ You see any road down the mountain that furnishes an easy way is sure to be crossed by creeks that are dry in the summer and fall, but raging whirlpools when spring melts the snow and sends millions of gallons of water every minute down the steep inclines. ”

“ Curious, isn't it?"
"It's simply astounding," said Jack. "But why do we burn coal so wastefully, Doctor? Why can't we utilize more of its heat? And what becomes of the waste heat?"
"Our methods are imperfect," answered the Doctor. "In a big manufacturing city thousands of tons of coal, or what is essentially the same thing, go off into the air every day in the shape of black smoke. You see the blackness of smoke is nothing but pure carbon or in other words coal. Then again think of the heat that goes up every smoke stack and is wasted in the air. ”

“ Ash cake is a species of corn bread, consisting of corn meal mixed up with cold water and a little salt, and baked hard in a bed of hot ashes and hotter coals, and if any reader of this story has ever eaten ash cake, properly prepared, I need not tell him that there is no better kind of bread made anywhere—no, not even in Paris, a city that prides itself about equally upon its "pain"—bread,—and its paintings, of which it has the finest collections in all the world. ”

“ Now we're going to do all that human endeavor can do to rescue Tom. To that end we must have strength in our bodies and alertness in our minds. We must have breakfast at once and a hearty breakfast at that."
None of the boys had an appetite, but the Doctor insisted and presently there was a breakfast served, consisting of bacon, cut into paper-thin slices and broiled on the sharpened point of a stick, held in a blaze from the fire; corn pones baked to a crisp brown in a skillet, and a brimming pot of hot and strong coffee. ”

“ At Pleasant Valley they have brought water down from the mountains and made gardens that are a delight to the eye and mind. They grow there the finest black Hamburg grapes in the world. But neither that nor any other of the great deserts can be redeemed entirely until either the government or some great company able to spend money by scores of millions shall undertake the work in a systematic way, selling water rights with every farm. ”

“ Selecting a suitable spot where the wind had swept a rock clear of snow, he laid aside his gun and blanket, and set to work to build a little fire and cook one slice of his meat for breakfast. The other he reserved for a late dinner.
As he moved on after breakfast, he came upon a flock of quails—or partridges, as they are more properly called in Virginia. They were helplessly huddled under the edge of a stone and were manifestly freezing to death. ”

“ During the entire trip across we were never for one minute out of sight of either a snow storm or a rain storm some where in the mountains that surround the desert. Obviously enough water falls in the mountains to make of that desert the very garden spot of America when ever men take measures to store the water and bring it down to the desert lands below. ”

“ It was not until after supper that Tom related the story of his mountain adventure, and as he was an expert mimic, he succeeded in so presenting the mountaineer's part in the conversation as to cause a deal of laughter, in which Tom himself joined heartily, although his own memory of his difficult journey was anything but ludicrous.
The weather had grown exceedingly cold again and the logs were piled high on the fire. As the boys basked in the heat that was radiated into the room, some one said: "What a pity it is to waste all the heat that is going off up the chimney! It would run an engine." ”

“ Springs were everywhere on this steep face of the mountain, bearing to the surface the water from the snows that fell in the higher lands above, sank into the ground, and percolating through rock fissures, found its way to daylight again wherever a crack or seam in the rock permitted. ”

“ It must have energy or force or whatever you choose to call it, to enable it to do its work. Now an engine gets its energy from the coal or wood burned under its boiler. This human machine derives its energy solely from food put into the stomach. When you are tired it means simply that your supply of physical force has run low. When you eat you replenish the supply, just as firing up does it for the engine."
"But Doctor," said Jack with an accent of puzzled inquiry, "how about those people that are always tired—'born tired' as they say? ”