A stingy man "won't drink branch water till there's a flood," and it is "a mighty triflin' sort o' man'd let either his dog or his woman starve." Some places are "so crowded you couldn't cuss a cat without gettin' fur in your mouth." For almost thirty years Horace Kephart collected sayings like these from his neighbors and friends in the area around Bryson City, North Carolina.

Kephart, a librarian with an interest in languages and in the American Frontier, left his career and his family in midlife to settle in what was at the turn of the century the wilds of the Great Smokey...