The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-15
From the Louisville courier-Journal.

T OHN JONES of Laurel county, In the Kentucky Highlands, is not a lo wholly admirable character as Judged by the standards of the period in which he chances to live He IS charged with having maliciously assault ed the rival who took his sweetheart buggy riding" His intention was, no doubt, felonious. Probably the survival
 of the man attacked was due to luck
 rather than to the exercise of any self
 restaint upon the part of MT. Jones,
 whose chivalry is that which moved the
 knights of old to array themselves In boiler plate and hammer one another into the uncertainties of the hereafter for the favors of the fair. His marriage, in jail,
 would have been celebrated with greater dignity if he had been born in the days referred to in the reminiscent poem con- taining the lines:
 sThe knights are dust, their swords are rust;
 Their souls are with the saints we trust" MT. Jones' in the rude heraldry of the mountains, alS uuDDtu RuSty ict iS~S ons not explained by the resident ehron- icler of events in the locality In which the assault upon his rival occurred, and where the wedding behind prison bars was solemnized But the preference of
 mountain belle for a fighting suitor, thus recorded for the world to take note of has doubtless furnished to brilliancy af xxhn nerbanS WAS called Rusty not because of any dingi- ness in his accoutrements. but upon ac- count of sandy hair which gave one of his probable ancestors in the Scotch
 Highlands the less homely appellation of
 Red Murdoch"
 In the good old days when an inverted kettle was safer for gentleman to wear
 abroad than the silk hat of the present
 time, which lacks resisting power, and when a coat of mail was preferable from every point of view to the frock coat of today, it was customary for young gall lants to employ cutlery or spiked clubs l in the settlement of questions relating to priority of rights in the heart of the belle of the baiiwick. As British es-
 sayist has put 1t, if A said that his girl was better looking than the girl to whom
 B was paying court, 1t devolved upon B. if he considered himself a gentleman and man of honor. and wished to retain his standing in the community, to fight the base calumniator of his inamorata, and slanderer of his judgment. If B killed A, or made him cry "'nough," the superior beauty of the lady of B's dreams
 was considered proven. If anyone ques- | toned the verdict in his own mind, he remained silent unless he had aspirations for the heavyweight championship of that l region. There were no bhggies in those days, but what would have happened 1 if A had taken a horseback ride with B's
 sweetheart 1t Is easy to imagine.
 l The fashions change. In poitR Society today the suitor who feels that his pre-
 serves have been .poached upon does not l look up his rival to shiver a lance upon | his breastpiate or cleave his cranium
 with meat axe. He tells the girl, confi- dently, that the other fellow has been | blackballed by the clubs to which he happens not to belong, that he is in debt,
 or inherits a tendency toward economy
 or insanity. The older and more prim- l itiye manner of disposing of the rival still obtains where society is less "effete,'
 and where emotions are more elemental
 and methods more direct,
 Rusty Jones of Laurel county was
 bred in an environment somewhat similar
 to that under whose molding influences grew to manhood the strenuous men who | were made the heroes of Sir. Walter Scotts verse and prose, and who followed
 assault and battery, shooting with intent
 to kill and other forms of felony as
 vocation. InheritIng the ethics of the
 middle ages brings embarrassments in the
 twentieth century, even where there is
 more or les tolerance of violence when
 the case of the man who as been sud den and quick in quarrel arrives at the stage at which jury of his peers may
 calmly consider 1t in all of it's aspects
 and approve his scorn of law by render ing verdict in dehance of the law and the facts.
 Rusty Jones will probably come
 clear" as they say in the mountains,
 upon the adjudication of his case. In the
 meanwhile 1t Is somewhat awkward to be
 married In jail but doubtless highly sat