The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1879-09-11
OLD-TIME "REMINISCENCES.
AristOcracy and Its Opposite In the South
Compared.
BY W. w.

DI w. w.
In delineating the leading character
istics and peculiarities of the different
sections dealt with in these chapters
concerning Southern life, it must be
borne in mind steadily that the differ
ence in traits between the people of the
highlands and lowlands was, to the
most casual observer, very marked, even
OF the people of the same State.
Where the habits of the one, from their
mode of living, were very simple and
unpretentlous, of course causing an alb
sence of rigid etiquette, or indeed of
what may be considered etiquette at
all, the other class, with their large
plantations, their hosts of servants,
their formal dinner parties and so on,
made all this the occasion of code of
politeness and exaction of Difference, if
possible, very far removed from the
free-and-easy life experienced in cabins
and ofTentimes in hunting camps among
the hills.
One of the plain and obvious results
OF this was that in any after dinner
quarrel growing out of too much iolli-
ficatlon or too much sensitiveness, or
in a row on court-day upon some occa-
sion of public speaking and partisan
heat, while the mountaineers not in pos
session of those expensive and deadly
luxuries-Colt's revolvers would pro-
coed on the instant to settle it by what
they euphoniously termed skull-dug-
gerry" the lowland gentlemen would
Just as unhesitatingly proceed to settle
like differences with the bowie-knife or
the pistol. Honor" was always
pricking them on" until the result
was that they were more sensitive and
fearful concerning public sentiment
than they were of what might promise
to be deadly combat with, possibly
in some instances, their best friends ::
and the cases are numerous enough
where, out of such hasty and mistaken
action, not infrequently resulted TRACE
dies which seemed in the end quite as
deplorable to the victor as the van
pushed in some bloody street-fght.
l remember one of these, q cowhid-
ing match and subsequently street
fight, between two young men, lawyers,
who had been like brothers, the quar-
rel springing out of something perfect
ly trivial in it's nature. The result of
it was that one of them was shot dead
by the other on the street, and al
though, as usual where influential friends
stood ready to avert from the slayer the
penalties of the law, that did not trouble
him, he all his life carried Nemesis in
his own soul that amply avenged the
murdered man. An old neighbor told
me that the slayer would never sleep
without a light in his own room, and
that constantly recurring dream
through life was that his victim had
him down, while the blood from the
fatal wound in his forehead was flowing
over his slayer and suffocating him "a hid
eous nightmare than which the imagin-
alton of Dante could hardly coniure up
anything more terrible.
AS for law and its extreme penalties
in such cases, it must be acknowledged
that horse-thief, if caught, stood a
much better chance of punishment.
"He has killed his man." was phrase
that in many sections of the lower
country carried with it something of
Difference to the individual thus indicat-
ed, and I shall never forget the aspect