" So the Rotary Clubs, headed by the Nashville
organization, raised the fund for the "York Home" through public
subscription, and there has been given to him four hundred acres of the
"bottom land" of the Valley of the Wolf and one of the timbered
mountainsides--land that had been homesteaded and first brought into
cultivation by "Old Coonrod" Pile, his pioneer ancestor--land that had
remained in the possession of his family until lost in the vicissitudes
of the days following the Civil War.
As his residence on his new farm was yet to be built for him, he carried
his bride back to the valley and to the little two-room cabin that had
been his mother's and his home.
It was impossible for Sergeant York to accept all of the invitations he
received to visit cities and address conventions, and he had often to
disappoint delegations who traveled the long, rough mountain road to
urge in person his acceptance. And he could not, with a slow-moving pen
upon a table of pine, answer all the communications that came. Before
the war two letters for him in half a year was an occasion worthy of
comment. Now each day, over the mountains upon a pacing roan, the
postman came, and the mail-pouches, swung as saddle-bags, swayed in
unison with the horse's step. Most of the letters were for the York
home.
The public mind pays tribute to its heroes in ways that are odd.
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