Una of the Hill Country | Page 7

all the luxury of his captivity for one free hour on the desert sands.
Surprise, absolute, unqualified, reigned for one moment. But a
circus-going crowd is uncannily quick. The audience perceived a
certain involuntary element of the entertainment. A storm of cat-calls
ensued, hisses, roars of laughter. For the place was the city of Glaston,
the Company being once more in East Tennessee, and the lion spoke
the old familiar mountain dialect so easily recognizable in this locality.
Even a lapsus linguae, "you uns." was unmistakable amidst the
high-flown periods. Although the ventriloquism was appreciated, the
incongruity of this countrified jargon, held in great contempt by the
townfolks, discounted Emperor's majesty and he was in ludicrous
eclipse.
Behind the screening canvas the portly manager raged; "How dare you
make that fine lion talk like a 'hill-Billy' such as yourself--as if he were
fresh caught in the Great Smoky Mountains!" he stormed at the
indignant ventriloquist. The other partners in the management
interfered in Brent's behalf; they feared that the proud mountaineer,
resenting the contemptuous designation "hill-Billy" might withdraw
from the Company, taking his wife with him, and the loss of Valeria
from the pageant would be well nigh irreparable, for her ethereal and
fragile beauty as Una with her lion had a perennial charm for the public.
The management therefore assumed the responsibility for the linguistic
disaster, having confided the rehearsal to a foreigner, for the

Norwegian lion-trainer naively explained that to him it seemed that all
Americans talked alike.
A course in elocution was recommended to Brent by the managers, and
he fell in with this plan delightedly, but after two or three elementary
bouts with the vowel sounds, long and short, consonants, sonant and
surd, he concluded that mere articulation could be made as laborious as
sawing wood, and he discovered that it was incompatible with his
dignity to be a pupil in an art in which he had professed proficiency.
Thereafter his accomplishment rusted--to the relief of the
management--although he required that Valeria should be described in
the advertisements as the wife of "the celebrated ventriloquist, Mr.
Brent Kayle," thus seeking by faked notoriety to secure the sweets of
fame, without the labor of achievement.
Valeria had welcomed the pacific settlement of the difficulty, because
her "good money" earned in the show so brightened and beautified the
evening of life for the venerable grandparents at home. For their sake
she had conquered her dread of the lion in the pageant. Indeed she had
found other lions in her path that she feared more--the glitter and gauds
of her tinsel world, the enervating love of ease, the influence of sordid
surroundings and ignoble ideals. But not one could withstand the
simple goodness of the unsophisticated girl. They retreated before the
power of her fireside traditions of right thinking and true living which
she had learned in her humble mountain home.
It had come to be a dwelling of comfortable aspect, cared for in the
absence of the young couple by a thrifty hired housekeeper, a widowed
cousin, and here they spent the off-seasons when the circus company
went into winter quarters. Repairs had been instituted, several rooms
were added, and a wide veranda replaced the rickety little porch and
gave upon a noble prospect of mountain and valley and river. Here on
sunshiny noons in the good Saint Martin's summer the old gran'dad
loved to sit, blithe and hearty, chirping away the soft unseasonable
December days. Sometimes in the plenitude of content he would give
Valeria a meaning glance and mutter "Oh, leetle Owel! Oh, leetle
Owel!" and then break into laughter that must needs pause to let him

wipe his eyes.
"Yes, Vallie 'pears ter hev right good sense an' makes out toler'ble well,
considerin'," her husband would affably remark, "though of course it
war me ez interduced her ter the managers, an' she gits her main chance
in the show through my bein' a celebrated ventriloquisk."

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Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
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