New notions of heroism and honor are filtering into the country
along with the notions of sanitation and health. That injuries
can be honorably forgiven and forgotten is a hard doctrine to
swallow in Eastern Kentucky, but when you see it practiced by those
from the great world of which you have only dreamed it comes easier.

The contrast between the two ways of living--that in the settlement
and that in their mountain homes--is not long in doing its work.
Decent living even in great poverty is possible if you know how,
and the settlement shows what can be done with what you have. The
relation of their poverty and ill-health to their lack of knowledge
and their perpetual lawless warfare is quickly enough grasped by
the young, and means a new generation with vastly improved morals,
health, self-control.

What more fruitful and appealing world for work, particularly for
women, do these United States offer? If there is an idle or lonely
woman anywhere revolting against the dullness of life, wanting work
with the flavor and virility of pioneering in it, let her look to
these mountains. She 'll find it. And what material to work with
will come under her hands! "I often ask myself," says the heroine
of "Mothering on Perilous," one of Miss Furman stories of the
settlement school, "What other boys have such gifts to bring to
their nation? Proud, self-reliant, the sons of heroes, bred in
brave traditions, knowing nothing of the debasing greed for money,
strengthened by a hand-to-hand struggle with nature from their very
infancy (I have not known of one who did not begin at five or six
to shoulder family responsibilities such as hoeing corn, tending
stock, clearing new ground, grubbing, hunting, gathering the crops)
they should bring to their country primal energy of body and