midday
He had not come into contact yet with the humanity in those hills . The log cabins he had seen from the train -- clinging to the hillsides , nestling in little coves amid apple-trees , or close to the banks of rushing little creeks -- had struck him as most picturesque and charming , and an occasional old mill , with its big water-wheel , boxed-in , grass-hung mill-race half hidden by weeping willows , had given him sheer delight ; but now he was meeting the people in the road and could see them close at hand in doorway and porches of the wretched little houses that he passed . How mean , meagre , narrow , and poverty-stricken must be their lives ! At one cabin he had to stop for midday dinner , for the word `` lunch , '' he found , was unknown . A slatternly woman with scraggling black hair , and with three dirty children clinging to her dirty apron , `` reckoned she mought git him a bite , '' and disappeared . Flies swarmed over him when he sat in the porch . The rancid smell of bedding struck his sensitive nostrils from within .