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                        Mississippi Piney Woods:
               a photographic study of folk architecture


                                   by
                            Patti Carr Black

                             an exhibition
                                 at the
                  Mississippi State Historical Museum

    [Illustration: Cover photograph: Grist mill at Lake Bounds, Clarke
    County]




                        MISSISSIPPI PINEY WOODS
               a photographic study of folk architecture


                                   by
                            Patti Carr Black


             Mississippi Department of Archives and History
                          Jackson, Mississippi
                                  1976
                             Reprinted 1980

    [Illustration: Map]

  Tennessee Hills
  Black Prairie
  Pontotoc Ridge
  Flat Woods
  North Central Hills
  Jackson Prairie
  Brown Loam and Loess Hills
  Delta
  PINEY WOODS

My appreciation and thanks to the many residents of the Piney Woods who
gave me directions, information, and access to their homes, especially
Miss Gertie Ainsworth, Hulan Purvis, Bob and Patricia Harris, Clarence
Smith, Charles A. McGee, S. D. Sullivan, and Mrs. L. E. Turner.




                              Introduction


    [Illustration: Opposite: Sam Hosey house near Moss, Jasper County]

  “Then a house appeared on its ridge ... as if something came sliding
  out of the sky, the whole tin roof of the house ran with new blue. The
  posts along the porch softly bloomed downward, as if chalk marks were
  being drawn, one more time, down a still misty slate. The house was
  revealed as if standing there from pure memory against a now moonless
  sky. For the length of a breath, everything stayed shadowless, as
  under a lifting hand, and then a passage showed, running through the
  house, right through the middle of it....”
                                                           —Eudora Welty

The dogtrot house described by Eudora Welty in _Losing Battles_ is in
every Mississippian’s memory. Dogtrots, a part of the Mississippi
landscape since the early 19th century, were one of the most popular
forms of folk structures in the state, particularly in the southeastern
section.

The study of folk architecture has been largely ignored in Mississippi,
with the major attention going to large mansion houses. Even the term
“antebellum” has been used to refer only to affluent homes. Many
dogtrots, log houses, and other rural homes in Mississippi are
antebellum (built before the Civil War) and are far more widespread and
characteristic of 19th century Mississippi architecture.

The houses built by the pioneers themselves represent an important and
basic element of Mississippi culture. They reveal the ingenuity and
courage and affirmation of men and women who built their homes with
little money, limited materials, and no formal training as architects
and builders. Few of these structures are left standing in their
original form and every day brings the destruction of more. This study
is intended to be a sampling, not an exhaustive survey of Piney Woods
folk architecture. It was undertaken with the support and encouragement
of Dr. Byrle Kynerd, director of the Mississippi State Historical Museum
and Dr. William Ferris of Yale University and was made possible by a
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.




                            The Piney Woods


The southeastern quarter of Mississippi, known as the Piney Woods,
extends southward from Interstate 20 to within twenty miles of the Gulf
Coast, and from the Alabama line to the Brown Loam Belt west of the
Pearl River. It is a high rolling land, once covered by dense stands of
long-leaf pine, and patches of hardwood in the bottoms. Numerous rivers
and creeks criss-cross its sandy soil. The Leaf and Chickasawhay form
the Pascagoula River that empties into Pascagoula Bay. The Pearl River,
with its tributaries, the Strong and the Bogue Chitto, empties into the
Gulf of Mexico.

The Piney Woods, originally inhabited by the Choctaw Indians, was ceded
to the United States by a series of treaties beginning with the Treaty
of Mount Dexter in 1805. In the great migration after the War of 1812,
settlers began coming in by horseback, on foot, by wagon teams, moving
west across the Fort Stephens-Natchez road and the Three-Chopped Way and
down Jackson’s Military Road. They came by flatboat down the rivers, and
later by steamboat up the Pearl. They came from the Carolinas, Georgia,
and Tennessee to the land described by J. F. H. Claiborne in 1840 as
“covered exclusively with the long-leaf pine; not broken, but rolling
like the waves in the middle of the great ocean. The grass grows three
feet high and hill and valley are studded all over with flowers of every
hue.”




                             Early Settlers


The pioneers of the Piney Woods were not agriculturists. They were
primarily livestock graziers and hunters, whose chief interest in the
land was to have a place for a cabin, a few out-buildings and stock
pens, small corn and vegetable patches, and open range for their
livestock. In 1870 William H. Sparks of Natchez wrote about the
settlements in the Piney Woods. He said they “were constituted of a
different people (from the agricultural population farther west): Most
of them were from the poorer districts of Georgia and the Carolinas.
True to the instincts of the people from whom they were descended, they
sought as nearly as possible just such a country as that from which they
came, and were really refugees from a growing civilization consequent
upon a denser population and its necessities. They were not
agriculturists in a proper sense of the term; true, they cultivated in
some degree the soil, but it was not the prime pursuit of these people,
nor was the location sought for this purpose. They desired an open,
poor, pine country, which forbade a numerous population. Here they
reared immense herds of cattle, which subsisted exclusively upon coarse
grass and reeds which grew abundantly among the tall, long-leafed pine,
and along the small creeks and branches numerous in this section.
Through these almost interminable pine forests the deer were abundant,
and the canebrakes full of bears. They combined the pursuits of hunting
and stock-minding, and derived support and revenue almost exclusively
from these.”

Gradually, in the second wave of migration, farmers began moving into
the Piney Woods, men who desired the ownership of the land rather than
its free use. Older settlers began to decrease their herds and increase
their fields, but by 1860 still only a fraction of the land was
“improved land.” Because the soil was poor and the farms tended to be
small, the plantation system and slavery never thrived there. The number
of slaveowners were few and the Piney Woods has remained predominantly
white.

In the closing decade of the 19th century, the railroads opened the
country to the lumber industry. Northern lumber companies bought vast
areas, sawmills were established, lumber towns sprang up. In less than
thirty years the great pine forests were stripped, ghost towns were
left, and the stumps of cut-over land attested to the ravaging of the
forests. Reforestation has restored much of the land to
loblolly-shortleaf pine forests, and industrialization is slowly
changing the character of the Piney Woods.




                           Folk Architecture


Because of the availability of trees, log houses were the most common
type of house built in the Piney Woods during the 19th century. The most
typical style, still found today, is the “double-pen” construction, also
called “dogtrot” or “two-pens-and-a-passage.”

Scholars disagree on the origin of the dogtrot. Some have attributed it
to Scandinavian influence, while others have shown a close relationship
to the double-pen houses of Africa. Henry Glassie has suggested that the
dogtrot developed in the lower Tennessee Valley around 1825. However, a
description of a dogtrot in Mississippi as early as 1789 has been
recorded. In _Narrative of a Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi in
1789-90_ (Cincinnati, 1888) Samuel S. Forman of New Jersey described his
uncle’s house that he visited on a plantation bordering St. Catherine
Creek, four miles from Natchez:

  The place had a small clearing and a log house on it, and he put up
  another log house to correspond with it, about fourteen feet apart,
  connecting them with boards, with a piazza in front of the whole. The
  usual term applied to such a structure was that it was “two pens and a
  passage.” This connecting passage made a fine hall, and altogether
  gave it a good and comfortable appearance.

It seems probable that the dogtrot construction was a natural physical
development, possibly happening in various countries simultaneously.
Shorter logs or timbers were more easily handled and the size of a cabin
possibly was determined by the length of logs the builder could handle.
Later when an additional room was needed, the corner timbering of the
log pen made it impossible to butt the units together. The space left
between the pens was made wide enough to be useful.

All of the log dogtrots studied in the Piney Woods were built in stages,
following the same pattern. The settler built a one-room log house or
“pen.” Later, as his family and fortune increased he built an identical
log pen and connected the two with a common roof, leaving a passageway
or “dogtrot” between the pens and providing an overhang for porches
front and back. One pen usually served as a kitchen and living room and
the other as a bedroom. The covered passage formed an area for household
activities, children’s play, and a cool sitting spot for summer
evenings. Today the passageway is more likely to house the “deep
freeze.” As the family grew and more rooms were needed, the sides of the
front or back porch were walled off and called “shed rooms” or “drop
sheds” (Fig. 1).

All log houses were not dogtrots, and dogtrot construction was not
limited to log houses. Many later frame houses were built in the popular
style. When Hulan Purvis of Rankin County decided to build a frame house
for his family in 1910, he emulated the construction of his father’s
dogtrot, using the same type of “long-strawed” pine, but pine that had
been planed at the sawmill rather than hewn by hand (Fig. 23).

Many of the early dogtrots have been remodelled, enclosing the
passageway for a central room (Fig. 25). Others have been abandoned or
destroyed. Not all houses with open passageways are dogtrots. The Bob
Goodloe house in Smith County is an example of a non-dogtrot because the
two sides of the house are not of equal size or symmetrical relationship
(Fig. 26).




                                 Tools


The only tool a man actually needed to build a log house was an axe.
With an auger, an adze, a drawing knife, a froe and maul, a broadaxe, or
saw, he could build it more efficiently. Tools and building techniques
were passed down from generation to generation. One such technique
enabled a man to raise the walls higher than he could lift a log by
placing two logs at an angle against the wall to serve as a skid and
using forked sticks or ropes to guide the logs into place.

Another technique was splitting logs by standing them vertically between
scaffolding and sawing downward, lowering the scaffolding as the log was
cut.

    [Illustration: 1. Sullivan House, near Mize, Smith County. Built
    1810-20 by Tom Sullivan in “Sullivan’s Hollow.”
    Present owner: Shep Sullivan]

    [Illustration: 2. First sheriff’s office, Pike County. Built in 1815
    by Laban Bacot.
    Present owner: Mrs. Lloyd Hamilton]

    [Illustration: 3. John Walters cabin, Rankin County, 1860s.
    Present owner: James Huff]

    [Illustration: 4. Tool shed, Walthall County.
    Present owner: George Wingo]

    [Illustration: 5. Blacksmith shop, Lake Bounds, Clarke County, ca.
    1900.
    Present owner: Mrs. Gertrude Gatlin]

    [Illustration: 6. Jonathan Ainsworth house, near Harrisville,
    Simpson County, ca. 1860-70.
    Present owner: Miss Gertie Ainsworth]

    [Illustration: 7. SADDLE NOTCH
    Aunt Judy cabin, Wiggins, Stone County, ca. 1870. Present owner: B.
    C. Batson]

    [Illustration: 8. V-NOTCH
    Sullivan house, Smith County, ca. 1810-20. Present owner: Shep
    Sullivan]

    [Illustration: 9. HALF-DOVETAIL NOTCH
    Wiley McNeill house, Clarke County, ca. 1820-30. Present owner:
    Charles McGee]

    [Illustration: 10. SQUARE NOTCH
    Lang barn, near Shubuta, Clarke County. Built over an 1815-1830
    dogtrot. Present owner: Mrs. Mildred Wilkins]

    [Illustration: 11. HALF-SQUARED
    Strong River farm house, Simpson County. Present owner: Mrs. Guy
    Gillespie]

    [Illustration: 12. SADDLE-V COMBINATION
    Carter Place, George County, pre-Civil War. Present owners: Mr. and
    Mrs. Bill Bailey]

    [Illustration: 13. Heart pine section for foundation block. Wiley
    McNeill house, Clarke County, ca. 1820-30. Present owner: Charles
    McGee]

    [Illustration: 14. Native sand rocks for foundation block. John A.
    McLeod house, Forest County, 1920. Present owner: Mrs. Lida Rogers]

    [Illustration: 15. Porch well. Sam Hosey house, near Moss, Jasper
    County. Present owner: Ross Hosey]

    [Illustration: 16. Bricks replaced mud-and-stick chimney in 1951.
    The original foundation stones remain. Wiley McNeill house, Clarke
    County.]

    [Illustration: 17. Loft windows. Wiley McNeill house, Clarke County.
    ca. 1820-30.]

    [Illustration: 18. Shingle or board roof. Tool shed, Walthall
    County.
    Present owner: George Wingo]

    [Illustration: 19. Window shutter. John Walters cabin, Rankin
    County, 1860s.
    Present owner: James Huff]

    [Illustration: 20. Detached kitchen. David Bracey Ward house, Silver
    Creek, Lawrence County.
    Present owner: Mrs. Alma Hedgepeth]

    [Illustration: 21. Jonathan Ainsworth house, near Harrisville,
    Simpson County, ca. 1860-70.
    Present owner: Miss Gertie Ainsworth]

    [Illustration: 22. William Jackson Purvis house, Rankin County,
    pre-1880.
    Present owner: Hulan Purvis]

    [Illustration: 23. Hulan Purvis house, Rankin County, 1910.
    Present owner: Hulan Purvis]

    [Illustration: 24. Sullivan house, near Mize, Smith County, 1810-20.
    Present owner: Shep Sullivan]

    [Illustration: 25. Press Bond house, Bond, Stone County, ca. 1870.
    Present owner: Mrs. Mary Alice Coker]

    [Illustration: 26. A non-dogtrot. Bob Goodloe house, Burns, Smith
    County.
    Present owner: Bob Goodloe]

    [Illustration: 27. Parker “tent” (1880), oldest cabin on Salem
    Church Campground, established in 1842.]

    [Illustration: 28. Boykin Methodist Church, Smith County, 1858.]

    [Illustration: 29. China Grove Methodist Church, Walthall County,
    1854.]

    [Illustration: 30. A-roof. Deen barn, Jefferson Davis County.]

    [Illustration: 31. Lang barn, Clarke County. Built over an 1815-1830
    dogtrot.]

    [Illustration: 32. Log barn, Carter Place, George County.
    Present owner: Mr. and Mrs. Bill Bailey]

    [Illustration: 33. A decorative tree mobile]

    [Illustration: 34. Bedsprings for a gate]

    [Illustration: 35. Street light reflectors used as post covers to
    prevent rotting]

    [Illustration: 36. 7-up sign used for backsplash]




                              Construction


The log houses were built of peeled or “skunt” logs of native longleaf
pine, called “lightered,” “yellow,” “heart” or “long-strawed” pine. The
settler selected trees with straight smooth trunks approximately the
same size. The trees were felled, cut into the correct length, and
peeled. They were hauled to the building site with ox or mule teams. The
foundation blocks were usually vertical sections of large heart pine
logs (Fig. 13), although some houses used native iron rock as foundation
stones (Fig. 14). These foundations held the sills of the house a foot
or two off the ground so that the light and air under the house
protected it from dampness and “wood lice” or termites. In some cases,
the sills were laid directly on the earth. The sills of the Wiley
McNeill house, Clarke County, laid on the ground around 1830, today show
little sign of rotting or termite damage. The resin in heart pine acts
as a natural preservative, making the wood almost indestructible.

Some of the houses were built with whole peeled logs (Fig. 4); others
with split logs (Fig. 5) and still others with square-hewn logs
(Fig. 6). The logs were notched or “scribed” at the corners to fit
securely and steadily. The style of the notch varied with the cultural
background, skill or preference of the builder. Saddle notching,
V-notching, Half-dovetailing, Square cornering, Halved cornering and a
saddle-V combination are found in the Piney Woods (Figs. 7-12). Of
these, the half-dovetail is the most difficult to produce. It is self
locking, as is the Saddle and V-notch, while the Square and Half-Square
require the use of pegs to hold the timber in place.

The spaces between the logs were either chinked with clay and moss or
battened with split pine pickets. The log houses left standing today in
the Piney Woods are generally battened inside and out with pine boards.
Exacting builders squared off the corners, but usually logs were left to
extend beyond the notches. The floor joists rested on the sills and were
fitted to make an even base for the floor of wide hand-planed pine
boards. Many of the earlier houses had clay floors, but no house was
found still retaining the dirt floor.

The ceiling, made of wide rough-hewn board, was attached to ceiling
joists, providing a loft space in many of the houses. Small ladder-like
stairs led through a hole in the ceiling to the loft, which was
sometimes used for sleeping quarters or for storage of seeds, herbs,
nuts, and gourds, (Fig. 17).

The rafters were made of small, peeled pine poles. Pine planks nailed to
the rafters formed the base of the shingle roof. Straight grained pine
trees were selected for roof shingles. The tree was cut into blocks
eighteen to twenty inches long and split into “bolts.” A froe and maul
were used to rive out the boards to a half-inch thickness and the roof
was covered with the boards overlapping (Fig. 18). In the Piney Woods,
such shingle roofs were called “board” roofs. Today most have been
replaced by tin or masonite. The overhang of the roof provided about
eight feet front and rear for porches.

Each pen usually had a window on both sides of the fireplace, cut into
the wall after the log pen was built. There were no window panels in the
early houses, but thick shutters made of hand-planed pine boards (Fig.
19).

Each pen had a fireplace. The early chimneys were “catted,” made of
“stick and mud,” and built on a foundation of native rocks, such as sand
or iron rocks. The chimney was framed up with carefully laid pieces of
oak strips. Prairie grass or sage was mixed with water and clay and
thrown over each rung of the framing. The log grass overlapped each
rung, filling the spaces. After the entire frame was covered, it was
dressed down with mud. When the clay hardened, the chimney was ready for
fire. Fireplaces were fitted with a bar and hooks to hold vessels for
heating water and cooking. These inflammable stick-and-mud chimneys and
fireplaces were replaced with bricks after kilns began operating (Fig.
16).

As a house grew, usually a kitchen was built behind and away from the
house as a protection against fire. It was connected to the house by a
board walkway either covered or uncovered (Fig. 20). It is rare today to
find the detached kitchen still standing for most house owners, with
access to electricity, tore down the kitchen wing and made a kitchen
shed from a portion of the back porch. In the 20th century, outdoor
toilets gave way to modern plumbing in shed rooms.

Before “running water” was available, it was considered a great
convenience to have an additional well in the house. These wells were
usually on a front porch and had a narrow cylinder for drawing water
(Fig. 15).

The Ainsworth house in Simpson County, the Purvis house in Rankin
County, and the Sullivan house in Smith County are well-preserved log
dogtrots.

Jonathan Ainsworth built his log house on the Florence-Harrisville road
in north Simpson County between 1860-1870 (Fig. 21). Gertie Ainsworth,
present owner and granddaughter of Jonathan, was born in the house as
was her father, Charles Houston Ainsworth.

Made of squared split-logs approximately 14 inches in diameter, the
house was built in stages, following the typical pattern of progression.
The 24-foot square north pen was constructed first with square notching.
An identical pen was added a few years later, leaving a passageway
between, with the whole house roofed over to provide a front and back
porch. Soon afterwards, a kitchen and dining room, each about twelve
feet square, were built off the rear of the house. In 1937, these
structures were torn down and the north pen again became the kitchen and
the south portion of the back porch was walled up as a bedroom. Later,
with the arrival of electricity, the north back porch was walled up for
a kitchen. None of the outbuildings are the original ones. The present
corn crib was built in 1911; the “car house” in 1925; the barn in 1935.
Miss Ainsworth remembers fruit houses, which were built of small logs
and daubed with mud. The house does not have plumbing and Miss Ainsworth
still draws her water from the well conveniently placed on the front
porch.

The Purvis house stands in the Walters Community in southeast Rankin
County (Fig. 22). William Jackson Purvis began building the house prior
to 1880. The fourth generation of his family now lives there.

Although both rooms have been ceiled and paneled in recent years and the
south fireplace removed, the basic exterior remains unchanged.

The original pen was built on the east side of present-day Highway 43
and moved to the west side around 1882. The code for reassembling the
pen can still be seen carved in the logs.

The north pen was added some twenty years later. The split-logs of pine
are put together with V-notching. An unusual feature is a storm-pit
built under the north pen with an entrance through an opening in the
floor.

In 1905 when the first son married, the north portion of the front porch
was walled off for the newly-weds. In the 1970s the north rear porch was
walled off as a kitchen and the south rear porch as a bathroom. The
house now has both electricity and plumbing.

A functioning farm until recently, the out-buildings include a smoke
house, cow barn, mule barn, blacksmith shop, seed house, chicken house,
and tool shed. The blacksmith shop still contains the old bellows and a
handmade grinding tool. The tool shed holds hand-carved mule hames, a
hand-pegged rake, and other garden tools.

Tom Sullivan built his one-room cabin of square-hewn logs in Choctaw
Indian country. The area later became known as Sullivan’s Hollow, Smith
County. The original log cabin was built 1810-1820 when Sullivan
migrated from Georgia, and his descendants have lived in it ever since.

A double-pen was added later using split logs instead of the original
square-hewn. Three shed rooms have been added over the years, the last
one for a bathroom in 1965 (Fig. 24).

Interior walls are battened with pine boards and the ceiling is made of
“sawed” boards. The mud-and-stick chimneys on each end were replaced by
brick chimneys in 1915. The dogtrot passageway is usually closed up in
the winter months with plastic panels. The house is occupied today by
Shep Sullivan, a sixth generation descendant of the builder.




                             The Campground


Serving a special function were the campgrounds where Protestant
religious meetings were held once or twice a year, usually during
“laying-by” time. The early camp meetings were held in an arbor-like
shelter constructed of oak posts with V-tops forming a frame for
horizontal poles that were then covered with leafy branches. This
shelter was called the tabernacle. Rough plank seats were constructed by
laying long planks on supports held up by stakes driven in the ground.
The dirt floor was covered with pine straw or sawdust to keep the dust
down and the pulpit was made of rough planks. Smaller shelters called
tents where the people camped out were built around the tabernacle and
furnished with pine plank or pole beds and tables, straw and shuck
mattresses. Later more substantial campgrounds, such as present-day
Salem Church campground, were built with a permanent tabernacle and
sturdy cabins. The Salem Campground on the Jackson-George County line is
the oldest extant campground in the state (Fig. 27). The first camp
meeting at Salem was held in 1826 and the present site was selected in
1842. The campground today is still arranged in the original U-shape,
but the materials of the buildings have been replaced. The tabernacle is
built of rough lumber, with three sides open and log posts supporting
the roof. The floor, covered with pine straw, holds wooden benches which
can seat 300 people. The cabins which surround the tabernacle are still
traditionally known as “tents.” Each cabin has two rooms, one for
sleeping, one for eating, cooking, or sitting, and the floors are
covered with pine straw. A wooden bench adorns each front porch. The
oldest tent on the campground is the Parker tent built around 1880.
Meetings have been held every year at Salem Campground since 1826 except
for two years during the Civil War.




                                Churches


After transportation improved and as the country became more thickly
populated, churches were built. Rural Piney Woods churches were simple
structures. Boykin Methodist Church (Fig. 28) near Burns and Piney Grove
Church at Polkville are typical examples. The pioneer church building
was rectangular, made of rough sawn pine, with pine shutters at the
windows and home-made benches fronting toward the home-made pulpit.
There was no ceiling, with the room rising to exposed hand-hewn rafters.
Often there were two front doors, one for the men and one for the women,
and one rear door. On the grounds of Piney Grove, one can still see the
long stretch of tables which were built for “protracted meetings” which
took the place of camp meetings. Instead of camping out, the people
attended services during the day and went home for the night. There was
always “dinner on the ground” at the protracted meeting.

Churches in more affluent areas generally had slave galleries, cabinet
work on the pews, and glass windows. China Grove Methodist Church built
in 1854 in Walthall County is a good example (Fig. 29).




                                 Barns


Although roof styles vary, the barn type used almost exclusively in the
Piney Woods is the transverse-crib barn. Henry Glassie, folk historian,
has theorized that the transverse-crib barn developed in the southern
Tennessee Valley. The Piney Woods settlers came from that area in large
numbers. Roof styles include the gambrel and the pitched roof, but the
most prevalent style is the A-roof (Figs. 30-32).




                              Grist Mills


Each community usually had one farmer who built a water mill for
grinding corn into meal. Lake Bounds in Clarke County has been the site
of a grist mill since the beginning of the 19th century. The present
mill was built by J. M. Martin in 1935 and is still operating.




                          Recycling Materials


Dr. William R. Ferris pointed out in _Mississippi Folk Architecture_,
that “salvaged” items are common in folk structures.

Items discarded as “junk” in non-folk culture become functional or
decorative in folk culture. A tour through the Piney Woods is a study in
the art of recycling. Bed-springs become a garden gate. Prince Albert
tobacco cans decorate a flower bed, rubber tires become planters,
styrofoam egg cartons become tulips. Materials are imaginatively
transformed into new uses (Figs. 33-36).




                               Conclusion


Folk architecture, defined as traditional structures built by craftsmen
with no formal training in architecture, is disappearing. It came from
and belonged to people whose lives were closely bound to the soil. Today
technology is continuing to alter the cultural landscape and the mobile
house trailer, the concrete-block structure, the prefabricated house are
the new folk structures.

    [Illustration: Mississippi State Historical Museum]




                          Transcriber’s Notes


—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
  is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
  _underscores_.







End of Project Gutenberg's Mississippi Piney Woods, by Patti Carr Black