From Pillar to Post Author:John Kendrick Bangs Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY IN traveling about the country, and especially in the South, I have been impressed with the wisdom of the character in Owen Wister's... more » delightful story of " The Virginian," who when another man applied an unspeakable name to him leveled a revolver in the speaker's face, and said, " When you call me that, say it with a smile! " (I quote from memory.) A moment on the road is made cheerful or difficult by the manner in which things are said, and the wanderer's homesickness is either relieved or deepened by the manner of a chance remark, which brings cheer if it be smiling, and a deeper sense of loneliness if it be otherwise. Throughout the South I have never felt quite so far away from home as in some parts of New England less than a hundred miles from my own rooftree, and I think that this is due largely to the positive effort on the part of the averageSouthern man or woman to maintain the traditional courtesy and hospitality of the South toward the stranger within its gates. It is only semi-occasionally that one finds in some sour-na- tured relic of other days any other attitude than that of smiling welcome, and even with the thermometer ranging close to the zero mark I have learned why the Southland is in spirit anyhow the " Land of Roses." It must be admitted, however, that when the departure from the attitude of cordiality is made it is done thoroughly, and with a sort of reckless truculence which the wary traveler will be wise to ascribe solely to its individual source. In the winter and spring of 1913 there was a great deal of work cut out for me in the Southern territory, and during my travels there, which involved the crossing and recrossing of every State in the section except Kentucky, from the Atlantic coast to the Mexican border, I enc...« less