William Gilmore Simms visited the mountains of western North Carolina on many occasions to gather material for his stories. He had a friend up here that would bring in the various characters of the community. Sharp was brought in one day to tell Mr. Simms how he got his wife and capital, and this is how he go it:
“The gal that I was tryin’ to marry had an old daddy who was so stubborn he wouldn’t let her marry unless the man that wanted to marry her could show some capital. I didn’t have no capital, and I was a-wonderin’ how I could git it when I saw a flock of geese on a pond. So I got me a long cane and bored all the center out of it. And I put that in my mouth and I took a rope and got down under the water, used the cane so I could breathe. And I got up under the geese and I pulled the first goose’s foot and tied it with the rope and then I pulled the next one and so on down until I got them all. Then I tied the rope around my waist and jumped up, but the geese all flew and they took me off with them.
“And they’d been flyin’ so long I thought they must be about New York, when they got hitched in a tree. And I tied one end of the rope to a limb in the tree, got myself loose, and started down the tree. But it had a big holler in it and I fell down that holler, and when I got to the bottom of the holler there was a couple of cubs. Wall, after a while the old bar she come. I knowed it was her when I couldn’t see the stars up through the holler of the tree. So I took my knife out of my pocket and when she slid down backwards I caught her by the tail and jammed that knife into her. And up the tree she went and she got to the top, a draggin’ me behind her. When she got thar, I pushed her off and she feel and broke her neck. And I clumb down out of the tree and I looked around and I found I wasn’t more than a mile from home.
“So I went home and got an ax, come back, cut that tree down, killed them geese, killed them two cubs. And I found that it was a bee tree! It was full of honey. Well, I tuck them geese and dressed them, dressed them bears, and sold the hides, and put away a lot of meat to last me through the winter. I took the rest of the meat and the geese and the honey to Greenville, Spartanburg and Asheville – Hendersonville and around there and I sold it and I made a thousand dollars. And I went to the old man and I said: “I’ve got my capital.” “Well,’ he says, ‘you can have Sally.’”