Eureka daily sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1871-1887, 1884-05-23


Diyereing from the thread of a long,
fine article in the San Franciscan OF the
10th inst, Don Piatt introduces the fol-
lowing truthful and eloquent episode:
The late Tom Marshall of Kentucky
was once making one of his brilliant
speeches to q mass meeting Of Southern
people that had been entertained for
hours by the repetition of the claim that
Northern men were poor-spirited traders,
and so cowardly that q Southern gen.
tlemau was able to thrash five Yankees.
He said: These eloquent friends OF
mine are laboring under q grave delusion
in asserting that Yankees are more cow
ardly and less willing to fight thar their
Southern brethren. This is not the fact,
and you will see it when ! tell you that
thew have more to fight for than We have.
They have property, which we through
our ignorance, indifference and laziness
have failed to accumulate. 1t is a law
of our nature that our courage to defend
is in proportion to the value OF what we
have to defend. Who among you here
does not rank honor above your life
Now the same American nature is to be
found in Yankee land that exists / n
South land. We are all n family; but
the Yankee adds to his sum Of honor
beautiful homes, wide possessions, great
enterprises, and above all, culture to ap-
~preciate his ownings. Won't he fight for
these! My gallant friend, sitting on his
blood-steed out there, who spoke before
me, shakes his head in the negative.
Well, let my gallant friend go with me
to Cape Cod, for example. l will
show him a long, lanky, bronzed
and grizzled man idling by a
hogshead of whale oil. That man is a
Yankee sailor, with hands as hard as the
harpoou he handles. He is home from a
cruise of three years in the northern
cruise fraught with peril that
tries not for once but for every minute
of its existence the highest courage, the
coolest self-possession; for he sails in
seas guarded by the messengers sent
down by King Death himself, who sits
enthroned at the North Pole, guarded by
the gathered winters of a thousand
years, and saved from endless night by
the aurora borealis that CLEANS about
that awful desert of silence like sheeted
ghosts of ruined worlds. This Yankee
sailor must fight his way through conti-
nents of ice fields, grinding and crushing
along as mighty ocean losses them on
ward. He must sail by icebergs that are
floating mountains. And all those perils
fade before the one that opens when, es.
them, he attacks the mighty mon
ster of the deep-atsacks from a frail
open boat, armed with only a harpoon,
and conquers through the keenest skill
and the highest courage. This is the
man too cowardly to fight a Southern
gentleman. We Southern gentlemen
can dispose of him five at a time. That
is the proposition. Well, let my friend
try this one. He may call the Yankee
sailor a liar, a thief and a poltroon, and
the fellow will laugh at him. He may
even slap him in the face, and the Yankee
will appeal to the law and have my gal
liant friend laid by the heels in a Jail.
But let him touch that hogshead Of
whale oil, to injure or destroy it, and it
will take all my gallant friends surviving
heirs and assigns to put enough together
to hold an inquest on. Let US not de-
ceive ourselves. Should the time ever
come-which God forbid-when through
madness we may try bloody conclusions
with these brothers Of ours, we shall
have to purchase of them arms and am
munition to begin with-and collins to
end with"