DEDICATION

TO THE MEMORY OF A FATHER AND MOTHER WHOSE SELF-SACRIFICE, HIGH
SYMPATHY, AND DEVOTION THE WRITING OF THIS STORY HAS CAUSED TO LIVE
AFRESH IN THE EVER-GROWING, NEVER-AGING, GRATITUDE OF THEIR SON




HEMP

THE REIGN OF LAW

A TALE OF THE KENTUCKY HEMP FIELDS



HEMP


The Anglo-Saxon farmers had scarce conquered foothold, stronghold,
freehold in the Western wilderness before they became sowers of
hemp--with remembrance of Virginia, with remembrance of dear
ancestral Britain. Away back in the days when they lived with wife,
child, flock in frontier wooden fortresses and hardly ventured
forth for water, salt, game, tillage--in the very summer of that
wild daylight ride of Tomlinson and Bell, by comparison with
which, my children, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, was as tame
as the pitching of a rocking-horse in a boy's nursery--on that
history-making twelfth of August, of the year 1782, when these two