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[337]
unsettled state.
We are not strong enough to overlook offences.
Why do we carry arms?
From fear of an attack.
Why do we fire so readily?
In order to forestall a blow.
When people feel secure, they cease to shoot each other in the street.”
“ But in the country — in the cattle-runs, and on the cotton plantations?”
“ In the cattle-runs we are rather wild; knowing hardly any ministers of justice save the hatchet and revolver.
But remember where the cattle-runs lie: within an easy ride of Kickapoo tents.
The cotton-yards are better than the cattle-runs; the Negro being less brutal, if more vicious, than the Kickapoo.
I cannot say that in Texas a fellow thinks it wrong to kill his creditor, his wife's seducer, and his tipsy comrade.”
It will be long ere Austin and Indianola are as tame as Norwich and Yarmouth, but the Anglo-Saxon blood is there, with all its staying power.
A few English ladies would assist the progress of refining much.
A lady never feels her sceptre till she finds herself the empress of some frontier State.
At Dallas, a gentleman from Missouri is good
1875.
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